Modhwadia says BJP is copycat, how true is the charge?

Screenshot of Shri Modhwadia’s tweet

Ahmedabad, 25 November 2012

In his latest tweet on Twitter, Gujarat Congress President Shri Arjun Modhwadia’s has described BJP as copycat.

In reference to BJP’s 55 rallies being held today across the state, Shri Modhwadia tweeted late in the evening on Saturday: “Copycat BJP using Congress’s idea by bringing its platoon of leaders to the state at one go… did some1 call bjp innovative?? Lol”

Modhwadia apparently described BJP as copycat because Congress had invited a platoon of its leaders to Gujarat to hold a series of rallies on 10-11 November.

But how credible is Modhwadia’s “copycat” charge?

As per the records available with DeshGujarat in its archives, calling many national leaders to hold rallies across the state at one go is not Congress’s original idea.

Forget 2012, the Gujarat BJP had organized rallies of national leaders across the state at one go as early as in 2007 during the Gujarat assembly election campaign.

On 26 November 2007, Gujarat BJP had used an innovative phrase ‘carpet bombing campaign’ in its official press release to describe the rallies of national leaders, and on 27 November 2007 BJP had organized rallies of Rajnath Singh, Narendra Modi, Purushottam Rupala, Sushma Swaraj, Venkaiya Naidu, Arun Jaitley, Om Mathur, Vinay Katiar, SS Ahluwalia, Sushil Modi, Gopinath Munde, Navjot Siddhu, Smriti Irani, Karuna Shukla, Dharmendra Pradhan, Kalraj Mishra, Rajiv Pratap Rudi, Hukumdev Narayan Yadav, Arjun Munda, Kailash Vijay Vargiya, Smt Kiran Maheshwari, Sumitra Mahajal, Jual ORam, Manvendra Singh, Maya Singh, Prakash Mehta and Feroze Irani.

No need to say anything further on this.

Screenshot of JP’s 2007 blog item on BJP’s carpet bombing campaign