Mumbai: Former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan said on Thursday that the BJP is indulging in person centric politics, but the Congress wants issue-based politics and the Congress’ manifesto intends to fight the elections on various issues.
“The Congress wants to talk about the issues of development, jobs, economy in this election and we will contest the election on these issues. However, PM Modi is running away from the issues. He is trying to make it personality based issue, but we will not let it happen,” said Chavan.
“We have come up with revolutionary announcements in our manifesto that we want to implement for the betterment of the people,” said Chavan.
He was speaking at the launch of the Congress manifesto by former Union minister Anand Sharma.
At the launch manifesto, Sharma said that the Modi government was in the ‘departure lounge’ and that its time to ‘threaten and mislead’ people was over. He also accused Modi of lowering the political discourse, saying his language was ‘full of bitterness and violence.’
“He considers his political rivals as his personal enemies. We don’t want to stoop to that level,” he said.
“Modi is not speaking about his achievements in the past five years and instead he keeps on talking about sending his opponents to jail,” Sharma said.
Referring to criticism of the Congress’ promise to scrap the sedition law and review the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, Sharma said his party has ‘zero tolerance against terrorism’ and that it was committed to strengthening the national and internal security.
“The Congress doesn’t need a certificate of nationalism and patriotism from the BJP, whose ideology supported the British and not Gandhi, Nehru and Sardar Patel during the Independence movement,” Sharma added.
Candidates present
All five candidates from NCP and Congress i.e. Milind Deora, Eknath Gaikwad, Priya Dutt, Sanjay Deena Patil and Urmila Matondkar were present at the function. Sanjay Nirupam, the Congress candidate from Mumbai North-West, was not present. He said that he has to spend three to four hours to attend the function, instead of that, he will attend two three corner meetings in his constituency,.
