More heated election rhetoric in Gujarat. The Hindu notes once again that BJP Minister Narendra Modi has attacked his main rival, the Congress Party, for being divisive and for supporting Muslim terrorism. Modi's words: "The Congress is responsible for all the problems faced by the country today, be it the problem of terrorism or corruption. Then the Congress can be rightly called the mother of terrorism and corruption." This is election rhetoric on religious-ethno-nationalist steroids.

For its part, the Congress Party has been hitting the hustings in Gujarat in what The Times of India calls a "carpet-bombing of netas" (leaders). The most prominent of the netas is, of course, Sonia Gandhi, who arrived in northern Gujarat on Tuesday.

With respect to the Congress campaign, an editorial in The Times argues that the Congress has been playing a bit of a double game in its campaigning: raising the issue of communal riots in its English language election materials but downplaying it in its Gujarati materials. The editorial notes no such duplicity in the BJP campaigning however: "The BJP’s focus [. . .] is almost exclusively on Godhra."

Again, keep your fingers crossed for Congress here.