They said this during a meeting of Vishwakarma community (artisans that include cobblers, carpenters, masons, goldsmiths, blacksmiths, washermen etc.) here. Pitroda, a Gujarati who belongs to the Vishwakarma community, was felicitated at the function organised by the party.

The function was attended by senior party leaders like Arjun Modhwadia, Narhari Amin, Shaktisinh Gohil, Bharatsinh Solanki, Shankarsinh Vaghela, Madhusudan Mistry, Mohan Prakash and around 3,000 Vishwakarma community members at the Convention Centre of Gujarat University.

Taking a dig at the Modi government for ignoring Pitroda, adviser to the Prime Minister on Public Information Infrastructure & Innovations and the brain behind the tele-communication revolution in India, the Congress leaders wooed the Vishwakarma community members to vote for Congress in the upcoming Assembly elections.

“Gujarat Chief Minister goes to China and learns from the copy-masters, but he does not take advice even once from Pitroda,” said Modhwadia while adding that the Modi government has ignored and forgotten the community. The Congress would bring back the “lost” agendas for the poor back on the centre stage after coming to power, he added.

Modhwadia said if came to power, Congress would make Karigar Vikas Board (Artisans’ Development Board) and revive the Mati Kalakari Board. Speaking on the occasion, Shakarsinh Vaghela announced that the party would declare Vishwakarma Jayanti a holiday after coming to power.

General secretary of All India Congress Committee and Gujarat state in-charge Mohan Prakash severely criticised the BJP and alleged that “the party is against labourers”. Madhusudan Mistry, former MP from Sabarkantha district, appealed the community to come together for political purpose and to make their presence recognised. Mistry said it was up to the people to decide if they wanted a person like Modi whose past carries serious blot.

Centre spending 1 lakh crore on hi-tech governance: Pitroda

Ahbedabad: Earlier in the day, Pitroda addressed a press conference on a “mammoth task” taken up by the Manmohan Singh government to cause “second-generation revolution” in governance. He said the government was spending Rs 1 lakh crore to change the governance through tele-communication technology and Internet.

He termed the spending as “planting seeds” for the next generation. “In mid-eighties we planted seeds for the first-generation telecom revolution when there were just 20 lakh phones and people had to wait for 10 years to get a landline connection. Now, we are a country with 900 million mobile phones.”