On November 25, Congress shared a video of Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra performing Aarti at the Narmada Ghat in Omkareshwar in Madhya Pradesh. The Gandhi siblings performed Aarti with the priests at Brahmapuri ghat on the banks of the Narmada river while holding Diyas and apparently reciting Narmadashtakam. The Congress leaders had reached the place as part of the ongoing Bharat Jodi Yatra.
Rahul Gandhi also presented a Chunari to the river before praying at the famed Shiva temple, one of the country’s 12 Jyotirlingas. The aarti was also attended by Priyanka Gandhi’s husband, Robert Vadra, and their son, Rehan.
नमामि देवी नर्मदे🙏🏼#BharatJodoYatra pic.twitter.com/3Bt312LLFw
— Congress (@INCIndia) November 25, 2022
As the Gandhi family continues to throw stunts to impress voters ahead of the Gujarat Assembly elections this year, it can not be forgotten how former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh kept Gujarat deprived of Narmada water by sitting on the project to increase the height of Sardar Sarovar dam for years because the Congress government in the neighbouring states of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra felt they were at ‘disadvantage.’
Jawaharlal Nehru, then Prime Minister of India, laid the project’s foundation stone in 1961. Since then, it was hampered by objections from campaigners such as Narmada Bachao Aandolan founder Medha Patkar, who claimed that the dam’s water would force 40,000 villagers to relocate since their houses will be inundated. Earlier, Medha Patkar had joined Rahul Gandhi in the Bharat Jodi Yatra.
The Congress party, which is now pretending to be a religious and devout party by worshipping at Narmada Ghat to secure some votes in the upcoming elections, kept the state of Gujarat parched for decades and decades. Interestingly, the then Madhya Pradesh CM Digvijaya Singh had also opposed increase in the height of the dam by the Narmada Control Authority (NCA).
Earlier in 2017, former PM Manmohan even lied that Narendra Modi, as the chief minister of Gujarat, never reached out to Singh over the issue regarding the completion of the dam. This followed Narendra Modi’s accusation that whenever he went to PM Manmohan Singh to make a representation concerning the dam, the latter would profess ignorance about its halted development.
However, several reports emerged revealing that Modi had indeed met PM Manmohan Singh, not once but twice to discuss the Sardar Sarovar Dam project. According to one such report, Modi spoke with Manmohan Singh in 2009 to urge that the Sardar Sarovar Project be designated as a national project.
As per another report, Modi brought up the Sardar Sarovar project issue again in 2013 at a meeting with Manmohan Singh. During this discussion, Gujarat’s then-chief minister, Narendra Modi, mentioned putting a sluice gate on the dam and requested Manmohan Singh to obtain approval as soon as feasible.
