The Newshour Debate: Modi Vs Bhatt's wife (Part 3 of 3)

It's battleground Gujarat as the Congress on Friday (Nov 30) fielded Shweta Bhatt, wife of suspended IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt, spicing up the contest for the Maninagar constituency where she will take on Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Shweta, flanked by her husband who had alleged complicity on the part of Modi in the 2002 riots, today started a march along with her followers from Mahatma Gandhi's Ashram in Ahmedabad and reached the district collectorate office where she filed her nomination papers before returning officer P K Jadeja. A political novice, Shweta will face a hard task to uproot BJP strongman Modi, who had won the 2007 Assembly election by more than 75,000 votes from Maninagar. However, Modi seemed unfazed and steered clear of mentioning Sanjiv Bhatt as he turned on the aggression ahead of the polls, claiming that money power won't guarantee the Congress a victory in Gujarat.

In a debate moderated by TIMES NOW's Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami, panelists -- Sanjeev Bhatt, Suspended IPS officer; Shweta Bhatt, Wife of Sanjeev Bhatt; Shabnam Hashmi, Activist; Amee Yajnik, Spokesperson, Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee; Meenakshi Lekhi, Mahila Morcha National Vice-President , BJP and G V L Narasimha Rao, Member, Electoral Reforms Committee, BJP -- discuss whether Narendra Modi's strategy of completely ignoring his direct Congress challenger will work and if the political fight between him and Sanjiv Bhatt's wife is a direct tussle between the Gujarat CM and the defiant cop?