Sonia Gandhi spent more than 70 pc of MP funds on minorities: Amit Shah in Raebareli
Raebareli/Pratapgarh/Gonda (UP), May 12: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday launched a blistering attack on the Gandhi family in its Raebareli bastion, accusing Sonia Gandhi of "spending more than 70 per cent of her MP funds on minorities".
Addressing a series of election rallies in Uttar Pradesh, he alleged the Congress was talking of bringing back triple talaq if it comes to power at the Centre. Shah asked the opposition party and its Raebareli candidate Rahul Gandhi to make their stand clear on triple talaq and on a Uniform Civil Code.
The Union home minister spoke at poll meetings in Raebareli, Pratapgarh and Gonda.
Accusing the opposition of appeasement politics, Shah claimed Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Samajwadi party chief Akhilesh Yadav and his wife Dimple Yadav were invited to the consecration ceremony at the Ram temple in Ayodhya but they did not attend.
"These people did not go because they were afraid of their vote bank. But the BJP is not afraid of vote bank. Not just Ram temple, (PM Narendra) Modi ji also built Baba Vishwanath's Darbar (in Varanasi) which was destroyed by Aurangzeb. Somnath temple is also being built of gold. Modi ji has worked to redecorate our places of worship," he said.
Shah termed the opposition's assertion that reservation would end if BJP wins 400 seats a "lie" and claimed that after Congress came to power in Karnataka and Telangana, its governments gave reservations to Muslims overnight by cutting the share of SC, ST and OBCs.
"Today, I am stating the 'Modi ki guarantee'... till the time the BJP has even a single MP, we will not allow scrapping of reservation for SC, ST and OBCs," Shah said.
Urging people to ensure the BJP wins 400 Lok Sabha seats, Shah said, "This election is an election is to make Narendra Modi prime minister for the third time, to make India the third largest economy in the world, to give a befitting reply to Pakistan for its actions and replying to terrorist's bullets with shells."
Intensifying his attack on the Congress, the senior BJP leader said, "From 2004 to 2014, the Congress government functioned with the support of SP and BSP. There would be bomb explosions virtually every day."
"Then Modi ji came (to power). Pakistan being a habitual (offender) carried out attacks in Pulwama and Uri. But, they had forgotten that this time, it was not the government of Manmohan Singh. It was of Modi. Within 10 days, surgical strikes and airstrikes were carried out," he said.
Referring to Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar's remarks on Pakistan having the atom bomb, the BJP leader said Rahul Gandhi can be scared of Pakistan's atom bomb but the BJP is not. Pakistan-occupied Kashmir belongs to India and "we will take it", he said.
"When I stood up (in Parliament) to abrogate Article 370, Rahul baba said do not scrap it.. he said rivers of blood will flow in Kashmir. Rahul Baba, five years have passed and nobody has the courage even to throw a stone, let alone flow rivers of blood."
"Mani Shankar Aiyar and Farooq Abdullah scare us and Rahul baba silently enjoys it. Rahul baba, clear your stand before the public," he said.
In Raebareli, he described the Gandhi family as a hindrance in the path of development of the constituency.
"You gave the Gandhi family chances for years, but no development work has been done ... They (Congress) do not believe in development. They do not even come to you in your happiness and sorrows."
Shah urged the people to vote for the BJP's Raebareli candidate Dinesh Pratap Singh, and said, "We will connect Raebareli with Modiji's development journey."
"The 'shahzada' (prince) has come here to seek votes. You have been voting for many years. Have you received anything from the MP fund? If you have not received it, then where did it go? It went to their vote bank. Sonia Gandhi has spent more than 70 per cent of the MP funds on minorities," Shah claimed.
Intensifying his attack, he said, "The Gandhi family is an expert in lying. They are now promising Rs 1 lakh for every woman. In the Telangana (assembly) polls, they had promised to give Rs 15,000 to every woman. The women of the state elected them (Congress) ... Forget about Rs 15,000, they did not even give Rs 1,500."
"Many people here told me that this is a family seat... It is true. The people of Raebareli have made the Gandhi and Nehru families win for years. But after getting elected from here, how many times did Sonia Ji and her family come to Raebareli? Okay, Sonia ji's health is not good, but has Rahul baba or sister Priyanka come?"
Referring to several accidents in Raebareli in the past years, including the boiler explosion at an NTPC plant in 2017, Shah claimed none from the Gandhi family visited the victims or their kin. "Our (candidate) Dinesh Pratap Singh visited every (grieving) household," he said.
At the rally in Pratapgarh, Shah alleged that the Congress, Samajwadi Party and the BSP were "taking care of Article 370 as their 'illegitimate child'".
"You made Modi ji prime minister for the second time and he scrapped Article 370, worked to end terrorism in Kashmir and make it an integral part of India. But these two princes... Akhilesh (Yadav) and Rahul Baba say that if they come (to power), they will bring back Article 370," Shah told the rally.
Asserting that the opposition INDIA bloc has no chance of winning the Lok Sabha polls, the BJP leader said, "Assuming that they do, who will be the prime minister?"
"When a reporter asked this, the answer was a one-year term on a rotational basis. Rahul baba, this is not a grocery shop," Shah said.
Referring to the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, he said that for 70 years, the Congress, SP and BSP kept the issue hanging. "Modi ji did 'bhoomipujan', and on January 22 he did the consecration," Shah said.
Canvassing for BJP's Gonda Lok Sabha seat candidate Kirtivardhan Singh, the Union Home Minister appreciated the law-and-order situation in Uttar Pradesh under the Adityanath government and said that earlier there were factories here making country-made pistols but now shells are being made in the defence corridor that will straighten up Pakistan.
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Huge turnout amidst SIR shadow caps ballistic battle for Bengal
Kolkata (PTI): The West Bengal assembly polls ended on Wednesday with what the election watchdog said was the state's highest-ever voter turnout of 92.84 per cent, leading to mouth-watering anticipation ahead of the announcement of results on Monday as both contenders sounded sanguine about their victory prospects.
Wednesday's second phase saw a 92.48 per cent turnout. The concluding phase covering 142 constituencies in south Bengal appears poised to match the first phase's record voter participation of 93.19 per cent by the time final numbers are collated.
The figures put the combined poll percentage over the two-phases at 92.84 per cent. The first phase of polling was held on April 23.
"This is the highest-ever recorded poll participation since Independence in West Bengal," it said.
The capital Kolkata recorded a turnout of 88.59 per cent, with Purba Bardhaman district topping the charts at 93.78 per cent.
The scale of participation sent out an overarching political message — practically every single eligible voter in the state felt personally invested in the electoral process and its outcome. They turned out in numbers large enough to make every narrative contested and every claim of momentum politically loaded. If the first phase tested whether the BJP could retain its north Bengal citadel, the second and final round was always the real battle for the saffron party on whether it could breach the ruling TMC’s southern fortress of Kolkata, Howrah, Hooghly, Nadia, North and South 24 Parganas and Purba Bardhaman.
At the centre of the larger political fight stood Bhabanipur, no longer merely a south Kolkata constituency but Banerjee’s political refuge, her emotional home turf and the BJP’s chosen psychological battlefield.
Banerjee, 71, seeking a fourth consecutive term after 15 years in power, faced Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari in a prestige battle widely seen as a symbolic rematch of Nandigram, where Adhikari had defeated her in 2021 after crossing over from the TMC to the BJP.
Five years later, the duel shifted to Banerjee’s own bastion. For the TMC, retaining Bhabanipur is about protecting the chief minister’s authority in her own backyard. For the BJP, breaching it would puncture the aura of invincibility around Bengal’s most powerful political figure.
The constituency witnessed nearly 87 per cent polling, sharply up from around 61 per cent in the 2021 assembly polls and 57 per cent in the bypoll that brought Banerjee back to the House.
Banerjee – who usually votes later in the day and prefers staying indoors on the day of polls – broke convention and hit the ground before 8 am, moving through Chetla, Padmapukur and Chakraberia areas following complaints of alleged intimidation of local TMC leaders.
As she sat outside a booth amid heavy deployment of central forces, Adhikari arrived there and declared, "I will not allow any hooliganism." He opposed Banerjee moving around with "50-60 people" with her.
Banerjee accused the BJP of trying to "rig" the election by using central forces, election observers and officials.
"The BJP wants to rig this election. Polls in Bengal are usually peaceful. Is there a goonda raj here?" she said, alleging intimidation of TMC polling agents and late-night visits by CRPF personnel to party workers’ homes.
"The atrocities by the central forces are unprecedented. What is happening is not at all free and fair polls. But despite all this, we have full faith that we will win," she said after casting her vote.
Adhikari dismissed the charges as "frustration", claiming Banerjee had realised that "not a single vote was coming her way".
Tension flared again in Kalighat when Adhikari visited another booth, and TMC workers raised slogans against him. Police resorted to a lathi-charge to disperse the crowd as BJP supporters answered with counter-slogans. Reports of sporadic tension were also received from some other areas amid sights of long queues at polling stations, booth-level flare-ups, and political bickering.
In Kolkata's Entally, BJP candidate Priyanka Tibrewal alleged that the TMC's polling agents tried to assault her after she objected to overcrowding inside a booth and a lack of voter privacy.
In Panihati, BJP candidate and the R G Kar victim's mother, Ratna Debnath, faced protests, while her party colleague in Basanti, Bikash Sardar, alleged that "200 to 250 TMC goons" attacked his vehicle and assaulted his driver.
The TMC, meanwhile, accused the central forces of exercising brute force on the general voters at Falta's Belsingha village, especially women, who were beaten up during a move to disperse a crowd from near a polling station.The party also alleged CAPF high-handedness on women and a four-year-old child at Sathachhia in Howrah and on villagers at Ausgram in Purba Bardhaman district.
"In the name of ensuring security, central force jawans are not sparing even women who were brutally lathi-charged. TMC protests this highhandedness of the male jawans who exercised brute force on unarmed villagers. We draw the EC's attention to such illegal actions of the CAPF and ask the poll body to issue cease-and-desist orders against such use of force. We believe, people of Bengal will respond to this on EVMs," Anirban Banerjee, party spokesperson, said.
The BJP alleged that in several polling stations in Falta, the option to vote for the party was blocked using a tape over EVM poll buttons, and demanded repolls in the affected booths.
The state’s Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal said repolling was likely to be announced in booths where EVMs were found tampered with. However, the order will only be issued after authorities receive reports from the district election officer or election observers regarding allegations of EVM tampering, such as using tapes or a blot of ink, he said.
