Shah targets opposition, says it is gripped by 'Modi phobia'

Narsinghpur/Betul/Dewas: BJP chief Amit Shah on Monday trained his guns at the saffron party's political rivals, saying they were suffering from "Narendra Modi phobia", and sought votes for the ruling party to throw "infiltrators" out of the country.

Addressing a series of rallies ahead of the November 28 Assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, where campaigning has picked up momentum, Shah said Congress president Rahul Gandhi was raising a hue and cry over the issue of identification of "infiltrators" in Assam, but ignoring the rights of martyrs. Speaking at Narsinghpur, he asked the Congress to give an account of what did the four generations of the Nehru-Gandhi family do when they ruled the country.

"The opposition is suffering from Narendra Modi phobia. They just want to get rid of Modi from the prime minister's post, while we want to get rid of poverty, insecurity and air pollution among others," Shah said. He lauded the Centre for the Army's surgical strikes on terror launchpads across the Line of Control (LoC) post the Uri terror attack in 2016.

"When the Uri terror attack took place, the entire country was angry. Modi ordered the surgical strikes and made India the third country in the world after the US and Israel to avenge the killings of its soldiers," Shah said.

During the days of former prime minister Manmohan Singh's government, terrorists from Pakistan would sneak into India and escape after carrying out explosions, he added.

At another rally in Betul, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief slammed Gandhi, saying he had created a furore over identification of infiltrators. "We have done the job of identifying 40 lakh infiltrators in Assam. On this, Rahul and company have raised a lot of hue and cry. They saw in it a violation of their (infiltrators') rights..," he said.