Junagarh:
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has offered to tender a public apology if his allegation that Rs 1,880 crore was spent from state exchequer for Congress President Sonia Gandhi's foreign trips is found to be false.
"I had said this thing based on the report of a newspaper. It's been 4 months since the report came out in the paper, in spite of which the government has not clarified anything on it, neither did they deny anything. The Congress party was silent, Soniaji and her family remained silent, the government remained silent. Had they given a statement denying this, the whole debate would not have started. If my information is proved to be wrong, even if its source is a newspaper, then I will accept in public that I have made a mistake," Mr Modi said yesterday.
Earlier in the day, while addressing a rally, Mr Modi said that the Centre has spent Rs 1880 crore on foreign trips made by Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
Mr Modi cited a report in a local vernacular paper that said the expenditure on Mrs Gandhi's trips had been revealed through a Right to Information applicant based in Haryana. However, the activist, Ramesh Verma, told NDTV that the chief minister has incorrectly attributed the details to him. Mr Verma said that in June, the Central Information Commission, based on his appeal, asked the Prime Minister's Office to reveal expenses on Mrs Gandhi's official tours; however, he said, those documents have still not been shared.
"I never got any information from the RTI. I don't know where Narendra Modi got this information. I did not give any interview and facts to anyone. Nobody has contacted me yet. I think Modi should give clarification on it," Mr Verma said.
Mr Modi has claimed that the Congress is trying to suppress facts by not releasing the information.
Congress leader Digvijaya Singh hot back today saying they have nothing to hide. "There is nothing to hide about Sonia Gandhi's foreign trips. Modi is politicising someone's illness and it shows their low thinking, what else can we expect," Mr Singh said.
"He should apologise for false and baseless statement," Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari had said yesterday. The Gujarat Congress chief Arjun Modhwadia had said that Mr Modi should get a Nobel Prize for lying.
"I do not know where he got this information from. As far as Narendra Modi is concerned, vitriol and untruth come naturally to him. This is his mindset. As the Gujarat election is approaching, he feels the groundswell of support (is) in our favour, and he is losing his sense of balance," Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal said.
At his rally, two days before Mrs Gandhi's scheduled visit to Gujarat, the chief minister said, "To those Congress friends, who are accusing our government of uncontrolled expenditure, I want to ask: is it not true that on the foreign travels of the President of the Congress Party, Sonia Gandhi, in the past three years, Rs. 1,880 crore has been spent from the public exchequer."
He added, "This clearly means that more than the total yearly budget of Bhavnagar, Jamnagar, Junagadh and Rajkot Municipal Corporation combined has been spent only on the foreign trips of Sonia Gandhi and on her luxury hotel stays."
Gujarat votes later this year; Mr Modi is on a pre-election state-wide tour. Mrs Gandhi will launch the Congress campaign in the state by addressing a rally of farmers in Rajkot.