A child at the meeting in Jasdan. (AFP)

Jasdan, Dec. 1: Sonia Gandhi today asked people to vote for the Congress for a peaceful and happy Gujarat.

“I have come to seek your votes, your mandate, not to rule Gujarat but to serve the state and ensure that the poor Chandni, the Koli girl, is not rap ed and killed again and there is no discrimination,” the Congress president said in Koli-dominated Jasdan, 60km from Rajkot.

The Koli community, which makes up 22 per cent of the state’s population, turned against the Narendra Modi government after the rape and murder of the 15-year-old Chandni in Junagadh in May.

“One who does not feel pain for others, cannot be motivated to help others,” Sonia said, describing the chief minister as “anti-farmer”.

Sonia’s choice of Jasdan in Saurashtra and tribal-dominated Navsari in south Gujarat to launch her campaign is in keeping with her party’s strategy to woo the two groups ahead of elections.

In 2002, the BJP had won 39 seats out of 58 in Saurashtra and Kutch and 18 out of 29 in South Gujarat, the two regions that go to polls in the first phase on December 11.

But with Kolis, tribals and Patels inclined towards the Congress, Modi is unlikely to pull off a repeat performance. Saurashtra seems to be witnessing an alliance of Dalits, Kolis, Muslims and Patels. In Ahmedabad and other urban areas in the state, though, the chief minister remains popular.

“It sounds like a joke when Modi talks about Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel. He talks about Gandhi’s ideals but follows the path of (his killer Nathuram) Godse. He invokes Sardar Patel’s name but follows a divisive policy,” Sonia said.

Modi has been invoking Patel and Gandhi repeatedly at his election rallies.

The Congress president also hit out at advertisements in local dailies accusing her party of being soft on terrorism. “But is it not true that terrorist attacks on Jammu’s Raghunath temple, Akshardham temple and on Parliament happened when they (BJP) were in power,” she asked.

“Not only this, is it not true that during their rule, the foreign minister himself released terrorists from our jails and sent them to Afghanistan.”