Roorkee, May 3
BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi today reacted strongly to Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s statement accusing him of “playing anger-based politics”.

At his fourth election rally of the day in Uttarakhand, he said such a genre of arrogance politics was, in fact, being practiced by the Gandhi family for generations.

Addressing a huge gathering of 30,000, Modi said that Rahul had in full public view trashed an ordinance related to convicted lawmakers passed by the UPA Cabinet that was presided over by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in October 2013. By terming Manmohan’s decision as ‘nonsense’, Rahul had insulted the veteran — who was in the USA at that time — in front of reporters. “Was that act not done in anger, Rahul ‘bhaiya’,” questioned Modi.

The second instance he cited was related to Sonia Gandhi. Modi claimed that when Sonia decided to enter politics, her coterie forcibly threw 80-year-old Congress president Sita Ram Kesari out of the party office in New Delhi.

"Rahul, is this not politics of anger by Congress leaders that was ignored by your mother?" he said. He again attacked Sonia Gandhi for not allowing former PM PV Narasimha Rao's body to enter the Congress' main office in New Delhi "because they didn't like Rao for having successfully governed at the Centre for five years, the only non-Nehru-Gandhi family Congress PM to do so". “Was this not an act of anger and shame that the corpse of a former party leader and PM was not allowed inside the party headquarters, just because of one’s whims and anger?” he said.

Fourthly, Modi referred to Rahul’s father Rajiv Gandhi publicly scolding, insulting and saying harsh words to the then Andhra Pradesh CM Tanguturi Anjaiah at an airport in 1979. Modi said, “Rajiv Gandhi was just a Congress general secretary yet he ridiculed the CM openly in anger. Later, NT Rama Rao used the incident to stage the ‘Atma Gaurav’ movement.

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