New Delhi: With its vice president Rahul Gandhi's rallies not making an impact on the people, the Congress is using websites to target BJP chief ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, party leader Arun Jaitley said Friday.
In a post on social networking site Facebook, Jaitley said that environment at Modi's rallies was electrifying and claimed that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's rally scheduled for Delhi has been cancelled to prevent comparison with Modi's rally on the same day.
Jaitley also referred to the sexual assault case faced by Tarun Tejpal, founder-editor of Tehelka and the subsequent problems being faced by the magazine and said that the publication had in the past been used to carry out anti-Modi campaigns.
"An important publication which was used in the past for more than a decade to carry on anti-Modi campaign appears to be collapsing under the weight of its own immorality," he said.
Jaitley also alleged that "dirty tricks department of the Congress" has used disgruntled police officers and civil servants to make baseless allegations against Modi but that "doesn't seem to be cutting ice."
"A large number of NGOs with invisible funding which had made a living out of keeping anti-Modi litigation alive in courts have not so far succeeded in bringing out any material evidence against him.
"What does the Congress Party then do? Suddenly a series of websites have appeared with some stories and some non-stories," Jaitley said.
He said anti-Modism was "no longer merely a political philosophy but also commerce".
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader said he had commented earlier that the Congress was unable to deal with Modi.
"The Congress's undeclared prime ministerial candidate is making no impact. It has, therefore, resorted to some of its leaders confining themselves to tweets and press conferences," Jaitley said.
Claiming response to Modi's rallies has been unprecedented, he said: "I have in the last two decades after the expansion of 24X7 satellite TV, seen a lack of interest in public rallies. Narendra Modi's public meetings have revived that interest."
