Modi saves his worst attack on Sonia-Rahul for Amethi

Narendra Modi, the prime ministerial candidate of the BJP, saved his sharpest attack on Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi for Amethi, considered a bastion of the Nehru-Gandhi family for the last four decades.

"I understand the pain of a mother who has been trying to get her son do something worthwhile over the last 10 years. But even after all her efforts the son has turned out to be disappointment," Modi said in perhaps the most blunt assault ever on Sonia and Rahul by a political opponent on the soil of Amethi. "This family's arrogance has reached such levels that it have lost touch with reality. I challenge the media to place them side-by-side with Smriti Irani (BJP candidate) and see who knows more about Amethi," he added in an apparent reference to Priyanka Gandhi asking a reporter "Smriti who?" on Monday.

To drive home his point in the Gandhis' backyard, Modi recounted how an "angry" Sonia literally threw out of the Congress HQ the elected president of the party, Sitaram Kesari. He also recounted how she refused to allow the body of former prime minister Narasimha Rao into the Congress office in Delhi.

Terming Amethi the worst-off and most neglected district in entire Uttar Pradesh, Modi charged the Congress with looting its people for the last 40 years. "But let me promise you today that in 60 months Amethi would become a case study of development for universities all across the world," he said.

Taunting Rahul -- Congress candidate from Amethi -- Modi said his party did not send Smriti Irani to the constituency to trouble him. "Rahul doesn't need anyone to trouble him, he is already quite troubled himself. We have sent Smriti here to save Amethi," the Gujarat chief minister said.

Modi also repeated some of the lines from the stump speech he has been making across UP on Monday. He proclaimed that the "ma-bete ki sarkar" has already been voted out in the preceding phases of polling and it was now only a matter of adding to the numbers of the winner so that a strong and stable government could come to power.