International Desk

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said on Friday (May 10) asserted that Narendra Modi will not make it to the post of prime minister this time as an INDIA bloc storm is arriving in Uttar Pradesh, reports PTI from Kannauj in Uttar Pradesh.

"Aap likh ke le lo (take it in writing)," he said at the rally predicting that the BJP was set to lose the election.

Apart from Gandhi and Yadav, Aam Aadmi Party leader Sanjay Singh addressed the joint INDIA bloc rally.

In Uttar Pradesh, the Congress is fighting on 17 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats. Last time, the BJP won 62 seats, and two went to its ally Apna Dal (S).

The INDIA block has done the needed poll preparations over the past years, Gandhi said.

He countered Modi again on his recent allegation that there was a nexus between the Congress and business tycoons Adani and Ambani.

"You have seen that in 10 years, Narendra Modi ji had not taken the names of Adani and Ambani," the former Congress president said. But now he is talking the names of people who he thinks can save him, he said.

"The INDIA bloc has surrounded me, I am losing. Save me, Adani-Ambani ji save me," Gandhi mocked, suggesting that the two industrialists were Modi's "friends".

Citing a news report about vehicles being stopped from reaching the rally venue, Gandhi said this would not prevent Akhilesh Yadav from winning in Kannauj.

"And in Uttar Pradesh, you will see, I am giving it to you in writing that the storm of the INDIA bloc is arriving. You take it in writing. The biggest defeat of the BJP is going to take place in Uttar Pradesh," he said.

He said this was because people had made up their mind that change is going to happen in UP. "A change is going to happen in India. People have made up their mind," Gandhi added.

In his address, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav said that the BJP has scored low in the general election phases so far.

He said Kannauj was taken to the "heights of development" by the earlier SP government in Uttar Pradesh. "People who travel the highway know that the highway was built by the 'Samajwadis'," he said.

"We assure the people of Kannauj that we will work to enhance the fragrance of development which has got stalled," he said, alluding to the region's perfume trade.

Kannauj goes to the polls on May 13.

"You take it as a written guarantee that Narendra Modi is not going to become the prime minister of India. It's over," he said at a rally in Kannauj, from where Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav is contesting the Lok Sabha polls.