Media covering only Modi's rallies, says Congress

Congress on Monday rubbished BJP's claim that senior leaders of the ruling party at the Centre were cancelling rallies in the national capital as these were not fetching crowds like those addressed by Narendra Modi.

AICC General Secretary Shakeel Ahmed rued that the meeting of "only one Chief Minister Narendra Modi of BJP" was being covered by media, while five Chief Ministers of Congress were addressing rallies here.

"Five Chief Ministers are campaigning for Congress - Sheila Dikshit of Delhi, Virbhadra Singh of Himachal Pradesh, Vijay Bahuguna of Uttarakhand, Oomen Chandy of Kerala and Bhupinder Singh Hooda of Haryana.

"But the attitude of media is somewhat surprising that they are giving publicity to the public meetings of Modi. "This, when all these five Congress-ruled states are more developed than Gujarat," Ahmed said here.

When it was pointed out that no top leader of the party like Sonia Gandhi, Rahul and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are addressing rallies for Congress in the last leg of campaign for Delhi, he said the Congress President has already addressed one rally and the Congress Vice President two.

He said that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's rally on November 30 had to be cancelled because of the visit the Japanese emperor and empress. "Congress has not stopped its campaigning," he said.

Dozens of leaders including Union Ministers Salman Khurshid, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Harish Rawat, K Rahman Khan, Kumari Selja, V Narayansamy, RPN Singh and Jitin Prasada, Punjab PCC chief Pratap Singh Bajwa, Assam PCC chief Bhuvneshwar Kalita and MPs Raj Babbar, Md Azaharuddin, Mukul Wasnik, Satpal Maharaj and others are campaigning," he said.

He said BJP leaders have on the other hand left everything to the Chief Minister of one state Modi and its local leadership has "totally surrendered realising they cannot defeat Sheila Dikshit on their own." Ahmed said on the contrary, ministers of Delhi government are out to address people and seek their vote.

After Singh's last minute cancellation of the November 30 rally, BJP had said Congress leaders have stopped addressing rallies seeing the crowd in Modi's rallies in Delhi. BJP had earlier taunted Congress over reports of people leaving the rally ground ahead of Rahul's address.