Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge on Saturday slammed the BJP over incidents in Maharashtra where a leader was recently shot dead during a Facebook Live session and the car of the journalist assaulted. He said the law and order has collapsed and goonda raj was spreading under Eknath Shinde government.

Kharge took to X and wrote Law and order has collapsed under the Maharashtra government formed by BJP’s stealing of the mandate. The Congress President said a politician is brutally murdered on facebook live. He said an outspoken journalist is being attacked by unruly goons of the BJP-RSS. Kharge said a BJP MLA is openly shooting at another politician in the police station.

The Congress leader further added the EknathShinde government is playing with the security of the people of Maharashtra by spreading goonda raj. Former corporator Abhishek Ghoshalkar (40), son of Sena(UBT) leader Vinod Ghosalkar, was shot dead by local businessman and social activist Mauris Noronha during a Facebook Live session on Thursday evening. The police said Noronha later killed himself.

Earlier, BJP MLA Ganpat Gaikwad shot and injured a local leader of the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena at a police station in Ulhasnagar near Mumbai on February 2 over a land dispute and political rivalry.

In another incident the car of Journalist Nikhil Wagle was attacked on Friday allegedly by BJP workers in Pune when he was travelling to attend an event.The Opposition leader said law and order was always maintained in Maharashtra under the Congress which led to the economic development of the state.

Deputy chief minister and home minister Fadnavis slammed the opposition for politicizing the murder of Abhishek Ghosalkar. He said the killing of a young leader Abhishek Ghosalkar is very serious and unfortunate. He said the the murder has happened out of personal enmity. He said both of them (Abhishek Ghosalkar and Mauris Noronha) were seen together on many occasions.   

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said that Dalits, OBCs, and tribals are the main and biggest beneficiaries of his government’s pro-poor schemes. Asserting that, he said it was a great achievement in the past 10 years to pull 25 crore people out of poverty.

After inaugurating and laying the foundation stones of 1.3 lakh houses under the Prime Minister Awas Yojana (PMAY), he said, that having own house is a guarantee of a better future for any poor person.

Responding to the Opposition’s allegation that his government has ignored SCs, STs and OBCs, PM Modi said, the biggest beneficiaries of his government’s pro-poor schemes are Dalits, Other Backward Castes (OBCs) and tribals.

Addressing the “Viksit Bharat Viksit Gujarat” program through video conferencing, PM Modi also said that the poor, youth, farmers and women are pillars of developed India.

On February 2, Gujarat Finance Minister Kanu Desai said the road map of “Viksit Gujarat 2047” has been prepared under PM Modi’s “Viksit Bharat Sankalpana”.

The state finance minister also said that his government has prepared a Budget for it. The Budget focused more on the poor, women empowerment, farmers and youth. He also claimed that the Budget would be the biggest in the history of Gujarat.

Earlier, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi does not belong to the Other Backward Class (OBC) but the general category.

Addressing the public during his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra in Odisha’s Jharsuguda today, Gandhi said that PM Modi was not born in the OBC category but in the “Teli” caste in Gujarat. He said that the community was given the tag of OBC in the year 2000 by the BJP.

Gandhi said Modi was born in the General caste. Gandhi also said that PM Modi will not allow caste census to be conducted in his entire life because he was not born in OBC, he was born in General caste, the Congress leader claimed.

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will contest all the fourteen Lok Sabha seats in Punjab, announced AAP convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday.

Addressing the public, Kejriwal made an appeal to the people of Punjab to cast their vote in his favour and make him win all the Lok Sabha seats. He also thanked people for blessing him with 92 out of 117 seats in the Assembly elections two years back and made his party win the state election.

With folded hands, he requested people to make him win in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. For the Lok Sabha elections, Punjab has 13 seats while Chandigarh has one.

Kejriwal added saying his party will declare its candidate for all 14 seats in the next 10 to 15 days. He requested people to make AAP sweep all these seats with the majority.

Speaking to the reporters, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann informed that the party will declare all 13 candidates from Punjab and one from Chandigarh by the end of this month.

On Kejriwal’s announcement to contest all Lok Sabha seats in Punjab, BJP leader Manjinder Singh Sirsa in a scathing attack, questioned the INDIA alliance and said their only purpose was to pressurise the agencies and protect the money accumulated through corruption. He said the alliance had no ideology. He also said Kejriwal would never want to share power with the Congress party.   

Meanwhile, BJP National Spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla slammed the Opposition bloc INDIA alliance for failing to unite their members and called the alliance without a mission, and vision, and only have confusion. The structure of the INDIA Alliance has been crumbling. He also criticised Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and called his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra strange. He added saying Yatra is more of a “bye-bye Yatra” than a Nyay Yatra and suggested Gandhi take out the INDIA Jodo Yatra, instead of the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra.