Congress, Left, AAP reduced to Modi-centric campaign: Arun Jaitley

New Delhi, Apr 1: For the first time an election is being fought "against the opposition" to keep BJP and Narendra Modi out of power, rather than against the "failures" of the government, BJP leader Arun Jaitley on Tuesday said.

Claiming that Modi has been targeted by a 10-year-long smear campaign based on "false propaganda", he objected to the expression that the Gujarat Chief Minister got a "clean chit", terming it as "wrong terminology" as the court found no evidence to even sustain a case against him.

"This is first election I am seeing that where Congress and Third Front are not fighting election on their achievements, but fighting against the opposition. It is the election against the opposition and its prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi," he said, adding that it is mainly to keep the BJP and Modi out of power.

Talking about Modi, he said, "Which political leader in the country in the last 67 years has been publicly criticised in media, parliament, and in the judiciary through NGOs and political parties, and faced many false accusation in connection with 2002 incident.

"Is there any other leader who has to pass so many tests and who faced many investigations from Supreme Court and then it was found that there was no case against him.

Clean chit is a wrong terminology to use for Modi. If a case is filed against someone in the court and the court gives its judgment in his favour, then it is clean chit," he said. Jaitley said in Modi's case, the Supreme Court constituted SIT has said there is no evidence to sustain a case against him.

"The court did not find the trial false, but said there are no proofs to sustain it. So the smear campaign that panned over last 10 years was based on false propaganda," he said.

The BJP leader also attacked Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for changing the course of its campaign from an anti-corruption crusader to anti-Modi tirade. He was addressing party workers at the election office of BJP's candidate for the New Delhi constituency Meenakshi Lekhi.

PTI