 "Uttarakhand deluge: Narendra Modi vs Rahul Gandhi propaganda machine on")
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who faced flak from the opposition for his absence at the time of the Uttarakhand disaster, today visited a relief camp in Guptkahi even the Union home ministry instructed authorities to disallow VIP visits.
The Congress leader took an overnight halt in Gauchar as he was stuck due to bad weather.
. Fresh landslide plays spoilsport to rescue operations
Gandhi's visit came against the backdrop of a verbal duel between Congress and BJP over Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's much-publicized visit to Uttarakhand to take out pilgrims from his state.
Reports about Modi and his officials purportedly evacuating 15,000 people in Uttarakhand have drawn derision from Information and Broadcasting minister Manish Tewari, who compared the BJP leader to “Rambo” and accused him of “rank opportunism” in the time of tragedy.
.SC asks Centre, Uttarakhand to step up rescue operations
Absurd claims of a rescue act in which 15,000 were evacuated in two days of a VIP visit are leaving the army stumped.
On late Monday evening, the Congress insisted Gandhi's visit was “not as a VIP”, but as an ordinary Congressman. His visit comes eight days after floods ravaged the state.
Earlier, Modi had visited flood-affected areas in the state and had accused the Congress-led UPA of failing to act effectively.
He had proposed he would rebuild the Kedarnath temple, badly damaged by floods.
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Coming down heavily on Modi, Shiv Sena, in the party's mouthpiece Saamna, observed that as the Gujarat CM has been given a national role to play by the Bharatiya Janata Party, he should not speak in narrow terms, only for Gujaratis.
"It would be better if Modi's propagandists exercise restraint in future," Uddhav Thackeray said.
Reacting to Congress terming Modi's visit to Uttarakhand as 'disaster tourism', BJP spokesperson Prakash Javdekar said: “Congress is playing politics on the Uttarakhand calamity because it is extremely scared of Modi's popularity and the kind of response he is receiving.”
Attacking Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Javadekar said "unfortunately, still the Prime Minister has not spoken to the country. He must speak to the nation. Every Prime Minister or President of the country speaks to its citizens when such a calamity happens.
Notwithstanding the plea by Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde that Chief Ministers should avoid visiting Uttarakhand for now, Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan also travelled to the flood-hit parts of the state.
Chavan said he visited Haridwar and Dehradun to oversee the operations being conducted by officials of Maharashtra to rescue the people from the state.
However, rain and fog on Tuesday delayed rescue operations in Uttarakhand where the death toll in the calamity rose to 807 with 127 more bodies recovered from Kedarnath even as security forces began the process of cremating decaying corpses lying in the shrine premises.
Fresh incidents of landslips were also reported from Tehri district in which a woman and a child were killed.