Crying 'foul': As election fever catches on, politicians descend to personal attacks

NEW DELHI: It’s personal now. With just a month of electioneering left – the last poll phase is on May 12 – star campaigners have started attacking their rivals in deeply personal terms.

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi seems to be ahead in this potentially dangerous game. In Jammu & Kashmir today, Gandhi made an issue of Narendra Modi’s marriage in terms not usually associated with his campaign style. “Don't know how many polls he (Modi) has contested till now, but he has revealed for the first time that he is married. In Delhi, he talks about honour of women, but his own wife's name doesn't reach the affidavit,” Gandhi said.

Congress itself has complained to EC on the issue. But Gandhi’s comment was unusual in its intensity of personal attack on Modi and linking the issue of his marriage to Modi’s campaign speeches on women’s rights.

Gandhi in J&K and Anand Sharma in Rajasthan also referred to what they described as links between Modi and industrialist Gautam Adani. Gandhi said in Gujarat there was an “Adani government”. “He (Adani) is Gujarat's big businessman. How was he given everything?”. Sharma said Adani’s planes and helicopters are used for Modi’s campaign and that Modi is a “promoter of crony capitalism”.

BJP today responded by saying Congress is talking like AAP’s B team. Party treasurer Piyush Goyal said Gandhi’s comment were “frivolous” and he said as far Adani was concerned, “many of his projects were in Maharashtra, a Congress-ruled state, and in Rajasthan, which was a Congress-ruled state till six months back”.

Modi’s campaign rhetoric also shifted to personal. In Chattisgarh, he said former state CM and Congress leader Ajit Jogi might know some “secret” about Gandhi family that made him indispensable to Sonia Gandhi. In Varanasi, BJP workers shared a poster with reporters that targeted various rivals’ personal lives. These included Azam Khan, Rahul Gandhi and Digvijay Singh.