Jabalpur (MP), November 17
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today hit out at BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi saying there were several question marks over the Gujarat model of development. He accused Modi and the BJP of resorting to falsehood and twisting facts to target rivals.

Addressing a rally here, he blamed the BJP for bringing down the standard of political discourse and vitiating the atmosphere with its “politics of negativism and separatism”, asking people to “think seriously” what the party that believes in "demeaning others" will do to the country.

"The BJP leader from Gujarat is always talking about the Gujarat model of development. But it is well known that several question marks were raised over the Gujarat model of development. The model need not work for the whole country. India is a very vast country where only one model of development could not work for all regions,” he said at an election meeting at the Wright Town stadium here.

Manmohan also took a dig at Modi for making "several goof-ups in matters relating to history". "This showed what kind of a man he is," the PM Singh said in the hard-hitting speech.

"In his zeal to malign others, a big BJP leader often resorts to falsehoods. He frequently distorts historical facts. Once in his enthusiasm to attack Congress, he misrepresented facts about a leader who is respected a lot in BJP," he said. Manmohan Singh took jibes at the BJP and said its enthusiasm was confined to criticising others. It was only interested in making personal attacks on other leaders, he said. "It is good for our democracy that political parties have enthusiasm, but it should be constructive. This should be used to tell people what good they will do if voted to power. It seems to me that the enthusiasm of BJP leaders is all about condemning others," he said.

"In the last few months, we are seeing a lot of negative politics and the standard of political debate has gone down drastically," Singh said, accusing the BJP of starting it all.