Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Tuesday said the Congress was against Narendra Modi becoming the prime minister as he was responsible for the massacre of over 2,000 people following the Godhra train burning incident.

Campaigning for party candidate Lakshmi Hebbalkar at Savadatti in Belgaum Lok Sabha constituency on Tuesday, Siddaramaiah said Modi as the chief minister of Gujarat had failed to contain the violence in the wake of the Godhra incident. He should have stepped down the very next minute, but he continues to be at the helm and has not even repented for the killings. A person with such a track record cannot take all the sections of people along, he said.

“The BJP must not come to power as its prime ministerial candidate is not known to be a man of peace,” he said.

Siddaramaiah said the BJP manifesto had nothing new in it. Since the era of Jana Sangh, they have been propagating the construction of a Ram temple at Ayodhya, abrogation of Article 370 that gives special status to Jammu and Kashmir, and favour a Uniform Civil Code. The BJP is only repeating the Jana Sangh agenda through its manifesto, he said.

“Modi, a hardcore RSS cadre, is propagating Hinduism. We too are Hindus...We are not from an alien land. The Congress has been taking the Hindus, Muslims, Christians and all sections of society along  it. The party has been following secular principles, while the BJP is sowing the seeds of poison in  society,” he alleged.

Questioning the achievements of the NDA government under former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, Siddaramaiah said the regime had not implemented programmes for the uplift of the weaker sections.

“Modi too doesn’t respect the weaker section, but he speaks for industrialists and capitalists. He has been asking the people for 60 months to prove himself, but he will destroy the country,” he said. 

“Karnataka is ahead of Gujarat in industrial development. We do not want the Gujarat model in the State. In Gujarat, 55 per cent of women and 41 per cent of children are malnourished. We do not want that in our State,” he said.