Togadia adds insult to injury

Togadia told reporters after delivering a lecture on Islamic terrorism organised by the Indraprasth VHP at Constitution Club, ‘‘there are two similarities between Mrs Gandhi and Lyngdoh. They are Christians and both of them don’t want early elections in Gujarat’’.

The CEC, he said, had ‘‘betrayed his anti-Hindu bias’’ earlier in a lecture delivered at Mussoorie in the aftermath of the anti-Christian violence in Dangs in 2000. He did not elaborate on the lecture theme.

The VHP leader said the decision to defer polls had generated a ‘‘very strong sense of injustice’’ among Gujaratis, who failed to understand how polls could be held in ‘‘terrorist-infested’’ J-K and not in their state, which had ‘‘returned to normalcy’’. However, he maintained that the delay in polls will only recoil on those who lobbied for it.

Togadia said that VHP activists had fanned out in 10,000 villages of Gujarat to ensure that Modi won the polls hands down ‘‘whenever they are held.’’ The efforts of the ‘‘secularists’’ to paint him a villain would boomerang and he would emerge victorious.

Earlier, Togadia said at the seminar that the Godhra incident had led to a sense of insecurity among Hindus, which resulted in retaliatory violence by them. Modi could not be blamed for riots. ‘‘It was a spontaneous mass reaction,’’ he said adding that even Gandhi, as chief minister, would not have been able to prevent it.