National spokesperson of BJP Shahnavaz Hussain has said that detractors of Prime Minister Narendra Modi are running a false campaign by accusing him of defaming the people of Kerala.
Hussain was reacting to the public censure that Modi’s ‘Somalia comment’ - in which he compared Kerala to the impoverished and strife-torn African nation - has attracted locally.
Addressing newspersons here, Hussain said that Modi had only referred to a particular social anomaly in the state and had never intended to defame the people of Kerala.
The Prime Minister had pointed to a picture appearing in media depicting the children of scheduled tribe in a North Kerala village poke around a waste dump for food.
He had tried to invite people’s attention to the poignancy of the situation as depicted in the picture, Hussain said.
According to him, the fiscal and social conditions in the state are far from satisfactory. The youth are being made to migrate to Gulf countries in search of menial jobs.
Technical victory
Referring to the impasse in Uttarakhand, he said that the Congress may have scored a technical victory on the floor test but 10 per cent of the MLAs were not allowed to exercise their vote.
If the State went to the polls at present, the Congress may get weakened further, he said.
"The BJP appreciates the patriotism of Congress president Sonia Gandhi but the government was bound to take action to bring back the money the nation had lost in the AugustaWestland deal."
The middlemen who paid the bribe had been held in the US. Those who had accepted it here are still at large.
CBI probe on
The Central Bureau of Investigation was going ahead with the probe and the government would initiate strong action in the matter, Hussain said.
The BJP is confident of scoring an impressive win in the Assembly elections Kerala. It would wrest power in Assam and improve position in West Bengal.
The corruption-ridden Congress-led UDF government in Kerala had earned a bad name for the state tracking the record of the erstwhile UPA government at the Centre, Hussain said.