INDIA bloc storm will blow away BJP in UP, Modi won’t be PM: Rahul Gandhi

Kannauj (UP), May 10 (PTI) An INDIA bloc storm is arriving in Uttar Pradesh, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said on Friday and asserted that Narendra Modi will not make it to the post of prime minister this time.

“You take it as a written guarantee that Narendra Modi is not going to become the prime minister of India. It’s over,” he said at a rally in Kannauj, from where Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav is contesting the Lok Sabha polls.

“Aap likh ke le lo (take it in writing),” he said at the rally predicting that the BJP was set to lose the election.

Apart from Gandhi and Yadav, Aam Aadmi Party leader Sanjay Singh addressed the joint INDIA bloc rally. In Uttar Pradesh, the Congress is fighting on 17 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats. Last time, the BJP won 62 seats, and two went to its ally Apna Dal (S).

The INDIA block has done the needed poll preparations over the past years, Gandhi said listing his Bharat Jodo Yatra, the Nyay Yatra and opposition meetings. Also opened were shops of love (mohabbat kee dukaan) in the bazaar of hatred.

He countered Modi again on his recent allegation that there was a nexus between the Congress and business tycoons Adani and Ambani.

"You have seen that in 10 years, Narendra Modi ji had not taken the names of Adani and Ambani,” the former Congress president said. But now he is taking the names of people who he thinks can save him, Gandhi claimed.

“The INDIA bloc has surrounded me, I am losing. Save me, Adani-Ambani ji save me,” Gandhi mocked, suggesting that the two industrialists were Modi’s “friends”.

“So he also knows in which ‘tempo’ and what kind of money Adani ji sends. The prime minister has the personal experience of the tempo,” Gandhi said, referring to the PM election speech on Wednesday.

Modi had asked if the Congress received "tempo-loads of black money" from the two businessmen to make Gandhi “stop” abusing them.

Citing a news report about vehicles being stopped from reaching the rally venue,” Gandhi said this would not prevent Akhilesh Yadav from winning in Kannauj.

"And in Uttar Pradesh, you will see, I am giving it to you in writing that the storm of the INDIA bloc is arriving. You take it in writing. The biggest defeat of the BJP is going to take place in Uttar Pradesh,” he said.

He said this was because people had made up their mind that change is going to happen in UP. “A change is going to happen in India. People have made up their mind," Gandhi added.

In his address, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav claimed that the BJP has scored low in the General Election phases so far.

He said Kannauj was taken to the “heights of development” by the earlier SP government in Uttar Pradesh. “People who travel the highway know that the highway was built by the 'Samajwadis',” he said.

“We assure the people of Kannauj that we will work to enhance the fragrance of development which has got stalled,” he said, alluding to the region's perfume trade.

AAP leader Sanjay Singh claimed that the BJP wants to scrap the Constitution to end reservation. “We will get the election deposits of whoever is trying to destroy Babasaheb's Constitution forfeited,” he said.

He said the “BJP people” got the house where Akhilesh Yadav had lived and a temple he visited in Kannauj “washed” because of “hate”.

Kannauj goes to the polls on May 13. PTI