India Today Conclave 2014 - Amit Shah, Manish Sisodia & Digvijaya Singh - Fair elections and peace in Afghanistan is crucial to the subcontinent

"Congress can't put up a fight, so AAP has jumped in as the spoiler"

Session - Special Election Zone. Win Uttar Pradesh, Win India

New Delhi – March 7, 2014: If the no-holds barred debate among Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh, BJP general secretary Amit Shah and AAP leader Manish Sisodia is any indication, the campaign for Lok Sabha polls 2014 will be fierce and even below the belt. Both Singh and Sisodia lashed out the Narendra Modi government in Gujarat, and Shah himself, on a string of issues. "Gujarat is a state in which 32 police officers are in jail and the Minister of State for Home (Shah) is a criminal," Singh said. Contesting Modi's development claim, he said, "In 1995, Gujarat was debt free. Today, the state's debt stands at Rs 1.72 lakh crore. At this rate it will go into a debt trap. Yet Modi goes around saying he has paid Gujarat's debt and now wants to pay off India's debt." Singh also dismissed suggestions that the Congress was headed out of power. "In 2004 and 2009, the media wrote us off but we won. In 2014, we will beat your surveys again," he said.

Sisodia backed Singh up. Describing his recent visit to Gujarat along with AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal, he said, "We had heard so much about the Gujarat model so we went to look for vikas (development). We couldn't find Vikas," he said. "Is Vikas some man living there?" Countering Shah's claims that the Modi government has improved infrastructure and education, Sisodia said, "Building four rooms does not make a school. Teachers are employed on contract for Rs 5,300 a month. How many of us want our children to work for Rs 5,300 after they get their degrees?" The AAP leader said India was yearning for political change, but cautioned that it should be real and not just a "change of faces".

Shah rejected these arguments, often forcefully. "The Gujarat government has tried to do all it could to make Gujarat government a welfare state," he said. On the BJP prime ministerial candidate's plans for Uttar Pradesh, which Shah is managing on his political master's behalf, he said, "Narendra Modi has no game plan in Uttar Pradesh," he said. "But Atal Bihari Vajpayeeji used to say that the road to Delhi passes through Lucknow. After working there, I can feel it. And I am certain we will travel that road to Delhi."

Source : Equity Bulls

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