Sunday’s event of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Mann Ki Baat will mark the beginning of BJP’s election blitzkrieg in Gujarat, with as many as 199 party leaders slated to “carpet bomb” various booths of the 182 Assembly constituencies in the state ahead of polling on December 9 and 14. The event — ‘Mann Ki Baat, Chai Ke Saath’ — comes in the wake of a meme posted by the Youth Congress on its Twitter handle, taking a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his chaiwala (tea vendor) past. The Youth Congress had apologised and deleted the tweet, stating that a volunteer had posted it. Twenty-one senior BJP leaders, including Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani and BJP president Amit Shah, will visit specific booths in different constituencies, where party workers and locals will hear the PM’s radio broadcast. Shah will lead the event at booth 98 in Dariyapur constituency in Ahmedabad city, while Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will be in Surat (West) constituency. Union ministers and Ministers of State who will lead the event at various locations include Piyush Goyal in Porbandar, Dharmendra Pradhan in Limbayat (Surat), Uma Bharati in Akota (Vadodara), Smriti Irani in Junagadh, Parshottam Rupala in Limbadi (Surendranagar), Mansukh Mandaviya in Talala (Gir-Somnath), Hari Chaudhari in Danta (Banaskantha) and Jasvant Bhabhor in Fatepura (Dahod). Union Tribal Affairs Minister Jual Oram will be in Nandod (Narmada). Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani will be at Mora village in Morva Hadaf, Panchmahals. Rahul stats questioned Ahmedabad: In a bid to corner Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi for citing “mismatching statistics” on the unemployment rate in Gujarat, the BJP on Saturday posted two video clips on social media. The first shows Rahul’s Friday speech in Porbandar, where he put the unemployment figure at 50 lakh, and the second, made hours later in Ahmedabad, where he cited the figure at 30 lakh.
