Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) president C D Patel told the gathering, mostly party workers and housewives from adjoining areas, that the BJP was slowly backtracking on the issue of Sonia's allegedly foreign origins as it had realised that harping on it would boomerang on its own senior leaders.

Patel exhorted party workers to launch similar mass contact programmes with greater vigour. He told party workers to overcome shortcomings, if any, in the campaign. The GPCC chief said theirs would be a model campaign opening up a new chapter in the struggle for freeing people from the clutches of BJP misrule.

While Patel refrained from attacking Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel, CLP leader Amarsinh Chaudhary accused Patel and his family members of indulging in large scale corruption ``in all departments of the government''. Chaudhary alleged that even trusted members of the BJP like Yatin Oza and Jaspal Singh were openly making allegations of corruption against Keshubhai.

He also alleged that a coterie of RSS men and L K Advani were running the Central Government, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was reduced to only delivering speeches and making statements.

He also criticised the BJP for inviting the Army General to its national executive meeting to brief the party of developments in Kargil. ``Such a meeting is without precedent and must be discouraged at all costs,'' he said.

About the Pawar-Tariq-Sangma trio's rebellion, Chaudhary said they were playing into the hands of the BJP. He said an ambition to reach the top had driven Pawar out of the Congress along with the other two. Interstingly, the public meeting was not attended by prominent leaders of the Janata Dal (G) faction and conspicuous in their absence were former chief minister Chhabildas Mehta, former Union minister of state for power Urmilaben Patel, former deputy chief minsiter Narhari Amin and Dabhoi MLA Siddharth Patel among others. Though this indicated at groupism still plaguing the party, PCC president C D Patel said Chhabildas Mehta was advised bed-rest by his doctors who had asked him to cut short his trip to Hardwar for health reasons. About Urmilaben and others, he said they were busy at a function at Vadodara.