'Mr Modi, Gujarat poll is not about you, but the promise of Achhe Din'

Agencies

November 28, 2017

New Delhi, Nov 28: Congress leader P Chidambaram on Tuesday hit out at the prime minister and said the elections were not about "Mr Modi, the individual" but the promised "achhe din" that had not arrived even after 42 months.

In a series of posts on Twitter, the former finance minister also asked if Modi had forgotten he was prime minister. "Mr Modi's campaign is about himself, his past and the alleged disdain of Gujarat and Gujaratis. Has he forgotten he is Prime Minister of India? "The Gujarat election is not about Mr Modi, the individual. It is about the promised achhe din that has not come in 42 months," he tweeted.

Continuing his attack, Chidambaram said the prime minister does not talk about issues like joblessness, lack of investment, collapse of SMEs, stagnant exports and price rise because he has no answers to the "hard reality".

According to him, Modi had forgotten that Mahatma Gandhi was an Indian and the son of Gujarat.

"Gandhiji was, and is, revered as Father of the Nation; and Gandhiji's chosen instrument to lead the freedom struggle was the Congress party," Chidambaram asserted.

The prime minister and the BJP, he added, may now "desperately embrace" Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, "but the redoubtable Sardar had rejected the BJP's parent RSS and its divisive ideology".

Launching a fierce attack against the Congress, Modi said in Gujarat on Monday that the opposition party was "disconnected from the aspirations of people of India and involved only in misleading people and creating an atmosphere of pessimism".

Pitching the elections as a contest between trust on development and dynastic politics, he said Congress had never liked Gujarat and liked to see it lag behind others.

"Gujarat is my Atma, Bharat is my Parmatma. This land of Gujarat has cared for me, Gujarat has given me strength," he said. He addressed four rallies in the state, which goes to the polls on December 9 and 14.

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‘Pakistan has no moral right to question India’s military operation’: Pak Islamist lawmaker exposes own country’s hypocrisy

News Network

December 23,2025

A Pakistani lawmaker has called out the hypocrisy of his country's leadership, drawing a parallel between Islamabad's military actions against Kabul and India's 'Operation Sindoor'.

Condemning the Pakistan army, led by Asim Munir, for strikes on Afghanistan - which resulted in civilian casualties - Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-F (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman questioned the consistency of Islamabad's logic. He argued that if Pakistan's cross-border attacks are considered justified, then the country has little ground to object when India enters Pakistani territory to eliminate terrorists.

Rehman was addressing the 'Majlis-e-Ittehad-e-Ummat' conference on Monday in Karachi's Lyari. The town recently gained international attention as the setting for the Ranveer Singh-starrer Dhurandhar, which depicted the intersection of informants and operatives within the Lyari underworld.

"If you say that we attacked our enemy in Afghanistan and justify this, then India can also say that it attacked Bahawalpur, Muridke, and the headquarters of groups responsible for the attack in Kashmir," Rehman said, referring to India's retaliatory strikes. "Then how can you raise objections? The same accusations are now being levelled against Pakistan by Afghanistan. How do you justify both positions?"

The JUI-F chief's remarks specifically referenced 'Operation Sindoor'.

On May 7, Indian armed forces carried out pre-dawn missile strikes on nine terror targets in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, including the Jaish-e-Mohammad stronghold of Bahawalpur and Lashkar-e-Taiba's base in Muridke.

Pak-Afghanistan Tension

Fazlur Rehman has been a consistent critic of the Pakistani government's policy towards Afghanistan. In October, during a peak in bilateral tensions, he offered to mediate between the two nations. According to a Dawn report, he stated, "In the past, I have played a role in reducing tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and I can still do so."

Rehman is known to wield significant influence within the region and remains the only Pakistani lawmaker to have met with the Taliban's supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada.

Recently, India condemned Pakistan's fresh strikes on Afghanistan. "We have seen reports of border clashes in which several Afghan civilians have been killed," Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said at a weekly media briefing.

"We condemn such attacks on innocent Afghan people. India strongly supports the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Afghanistan," he said.

A spokesperson for the Taliban regime claimed Pakistan initiated the attacks and that Kabul was "forced to respond".

The two countries have been locked in an increasingly bitter dispute since the Taliban authorities retook control in Kabul in 2021, with Islamabad accusing its neighbour of harbouring terrorists - a charge that the Afghan government denies.

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