Rahul's Italian spectacles prevent him from seeing surgical strikes' importance: Shah

Sounding the poll bugle in Madhya Pradesh, BJP chief Amit Shah on Saturday asked Congress president Rahul Gandhi to give an account of work done by "four generations" of his family instead of questioning Prime Minister Narendra Modi's performance.

Shah launched the state Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) mass contact campaign in the Malwa-Nimad region of the poll-bound state from here on Saturday ahead of the November 28 Assembly elections.

Speaking at a convention of party workers at Dussehra Maidan later, Shah said, "Rahul has been going around Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, asking the prime minister what his government has done in last four and a half years.

"We do not need to answer you. But the people of the country are asking you to give the account of (work done by) your four generations," he added.

Successive Congress governments failed to fulfil the 40-year-old demand of One Rank-One Pension, while the Modi government implemented the scheme and gave a benefit worth Rs 10,000 crore to retired soldiers, he said.

"Your governments did not provide an adequate price for food grains to farmers. Farmers were demanding this for the last 70 years," he said.

"The Modi government fulfilled the demand of fixing the MSP (Minimum Support Price) of Rabi and Kharif crops at one-and-a-half times the cost," Shah said further.

He alleged that Congress governments of the past put the country's security at risk for vote-bank politics.

"In the 1990s, terrorists from Pakistan used to cross the border in Jammu and Kashmir and take away (decapitate) the heads of our soldiers. But Modi sent our brave army across the border and took revenge by carrying out surgical strikes," he said.

"Rahul had said the prime minister was pandering the blood of soldiers. He does not know the value of martyrdom, otherwise, he would not have used such words," Shah said referring to the Gandhi scion's comment in the wake of the 2016 surgical strikes that Modi was doing "khoon ki dalaali" with the blood of the soldiers.

"Rahul can't see the importance of surgical strikes, because he has Italian spectacles on his eyes," Shah said, in an apparent jibe at the Italian origins of United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairman Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi's mother.

Shah further slammed Rahul Gandhi on the issue of illegal immigrants and asked him to clarify his stand on the issue before seeking votes in Madhya Pradesh.

The Congress allowed "crores of infiltrators" to enter the country and did nothing to evict them, Shah said.

"The BJP government identified 40 lakh infiltrators by creating NRC (National Register of Citizens) in Assam. Parties like Congress, Trinamool Congress, Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party raised a hue and cry over this," he said.

Asking people to vote for the BJP, he said, "We assure you that we will drive infiltrators out of the country because we do not do vote-bank politics. Country's security is of paramount importance for us."

Shah also accused West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of changing her stance on the issue.

"Earlier Mamata used to raise voice against infiltrators. But now she is saying that infiltrators should be allowed to stay in the country because they vote for her," the BJP chief said.

(With inputs from agencies.)