‘Lying’ Rahul playing politics with Manohar Parrikar’s health: Amit Shah

PANAJI: BJP president Amit Shah slammed Congress president Rahul Gandhi for “lying” and “stooping low” for petty politics after visiting Goa chief minister Manohar Parrikar late last month to inquire about his health.

“Suddenly, without any intimation, Congress president met Parrikar to inquire about his well-being. We felt good, because Congress president went to give good wishes to one of our leaders who is fighting against illness. But by evening, Gandhi said Parrikar spoke about Rafale deal. We have never seen such low-level politics done by anyone, who played with a sick person’s health by lying,” Shah told around 17,000 party booth workers at the Atal Booth Karyakarta Sammelan on Saturday.

Gandhi had met Parrikar at the chief minister’s office in the state secretariat for around three minutes on January 29 and later, speaking to party workers in Kochi, had said he had met Parrikar in the morning and that they had discussed the Rafale deal. Gandhi had added that the Goa chief minister had said he had no information about it. The next day, Parrikar wrote a letter to Gandhi asking him to put out the truth.

“I want to tell the people of Goa that your leader is fighting with illness and Congress is doing politics. This has brought down the political level,” Shah told the booth workers in his 30-minute address.

Shah, who had an hourlong meeting with Parrikar at his residence before addressing the party workers, said despite suffering from illness, the chief minister had joined them and had expressed his desire to speak for at least two minutes. “If one has to see how BJP karyakarta is, then there is no better example than Parrikar, the way he respects and loves the party,” Shah said.

“Every second day, Parrikar calls Delhi and asks for certain project files to be cleared. ‘Do something for mining’, he constantly tells us. We are committed to resume mining in the state. Modi and Parrikar jodi will take Goa forward,” Shah said with Parrikar by his side.

Parrikar, in his brief address, said he would be speaking to them at length during the elections and exhorted the party workers to join hands to defeat Congress.

“We have to forget small differences and work for the party to bring back Modi as the Prime Minister,” Parrikar said. He said a lot of rumours would be spread, “but you should not give credence to those rumours”.

Shah also urged party workers to win both the seats and bring Modi back as the PM. He also said they were committed to implementing NRC to oust infiltrators from the country.

Listing out the achievements of the state and central governments, Shah said the Modi-Parrikar jodi had strengthened the security of the country. He also said India became the third country in the world, after the US and Israel, to conduct surgical strikes to kill its enemies who had attacked and killed “our soldiers”.

Parrikar was the defence minister when the surgical strikes were conducted.

Shah also said Goans would benefit from the Centre’s decision to exempt income tax for those earning up to Rs 5 lakh. He also said the results of 2019 elections would show West Bengal and Odisha coming into the party fold. “Goa is like a bindi to the country. We have to take a pledge today that we will win both the Lok Sabha seats in the state,” he said.