Modi trips to home state have a lot to do with water, and polls

GUJARAT POLLS PM may visit state to bring water to parched region, and woo angry Patidars

AHMEDABAD: Despite his busy schedule that takes him abroad often, Prime Minister Narendra Modi finds time to visit Gujarat. He has visited his home state at least five times this year, mostly to inaugurate water-related projects and schemes.

In June end, he was in Rajkot to release Narmada waters into the Aji dam. The following day, he launched a water project in Modasa city in Aravalli district. A month earlier, he had inaugurated a water pumping station of Narmada at Bhachau in Kutch. In April as well, Modi was in the state to inaugurate the phase one of a pipeline canal that would irrigate Botad district.

Assembly elections in Gujarat are due later this year and frequent visits by the prime minister, who was the state’s chief minister for four terms, are on expected lines. But his obsession with water projects has set off political speculations with commentators and critics saying he has taken the ‘water route’ to woo the electorate this time round.

Water is a critical issue, more so in the Saurashtra region comprising nine districts where over 100 dams have dried up in the wake of scanty rains. A majority of the water projects that Modi has inaugurated in his recent visits will benefit the region where most farmers belong to the Patidar community that in the recent past has had a fall-out with the state BJP government.

Besides bringing water to a parched region, the prime minister is possibly aiming to bring back the Patidars to the party fold.

“Narendrabhai has been trying to compensate for 10 years’ of injustice inflicted by the UPA on Gujarat. He comes to inaugurate all these state projects because earlier foundation for same was laid by him,” BJP spokesperson Bharat Pandya told HT.

The opposition Congress, however, sees in Modi’s repeated visits an increasing desperation. “The BJP is nervous and not confident of winning Gujarat. That is the reason that the prime minister had to do a roadshow in Rajkot, the constituency of chief minister Vijay Rupani,” pointed out Congress spokesperson Shaktisinh Gohil.

But the state BJP sees great positives in Modi’s repeated visits and hopes to reap rich dividends in the upcoming polls. “Friends, for the first time in over 40 years, a prime minister has visited Rajkot to dedicate a development project. Others in the last four decades visited only for poll campaigns,” chief minister Rupani told a rally last month.

Modi himself has been stressing the importance of water at all his rallies. He has spoken at length on the importance of water conservation during his stopovers in Bharuch, Rajkot, Botad and Modasa.