My fight is against garibi, not Gogoi: PM

Majuli/Tinsukia/Guwahati: PM Narendra Modi on Saturday joined BJP’s poll blitzkrieg by addressing four rallies in Assam, which his party is trying hard to wrest from Congress after a spectacular performance in the 2014 Lok Sabha election saw BJP win seven of the state’s 14 parliamentary seats.
Modi held his first rally in Majuli, the seat of Vaishnavite culture from where BJP’s CM candidate Sarbananda Sonowal is contesting.Right from the outset, the PM launched a broadside at Congress CM Tarun Gogoi, calling him a “politician approaching 90” and hailing Sonowal as the ‘tarun’ (young) face of Assam.
“My fight is not against Gogoi, but poverty, corruption and destruction of Assam,” Modi said. “Gogoiji is approaching 90 and I don’t consider him a rival. He is my senior and in our culture, we bow before our elders to seek their blessing,” he added. Many interpreted the PM’s remarks as his answer to Gogoi’s earlier reference to the election as a fight between him and Modi. Gogoi’s actual age is 79.
In all his speeches, at Majuli, Tinsukia, Bokakhat and Bipuria in upper Assam — a known Congress bastion — Modi gave a clarion call for “development, fast development and overall development”. Modi is the first PM to visit Majuli, one of Asia’s largest river islands. He said Assam, one of India’s most prosperous states at the time of Independence, has now become one of the poorest.