New Delhi: A lot has changed in Uttar Pradesh in the seven-and-a-half years between November 14, 2016 and May 25, 2024, but what remains the same is the way in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi is marketing musty tales from the bygone Nehruvian era to seek votes. And this has been true of Modi’s election pitch in Ghazipur, a seat the Bharatiya Janata Party lost in 2019.Since November 14, 2016, the BJP has won back-to-back assembly elections in UP (2017 and 2022) and outmuscled the Opposition in another Lok Sabha election (2019). But what has remained unchanged in Modi’s script in the eastern district of Ghazipur over the years is a story from 1962 he narrates to highlight how poverty-stricken people in Purvanchal were compelled to sift through animal dung for wheat as a means of survival in the post-Independence era. On May 25, while addressing a rally in Ghazipur, Modi repeated the same story that he narrated while campaigning in the district on November 14, 2016 – the 127th birth anniversary of Nehru, a date deliberately chosen by Modi – ahead of the 2017 UP assembly election to target the Opposition.In both rallies, more than seven years apart, Modi referred to a moving speech made in Parliament in 1962 by then Ghazipur MP V.S. Gahmari on the abject poverty of Purvanchal when Jawaharlal Nehru was the prime minister.“Whenever I come to Ghazipur, I always remember a particular incident from the past. It is witness to the fact how the INDI people (INDIA bloc) betrayed Ghazipur. After independence, the Congress was firm on not developing this region,” said Modi on May 25.He continued, describing how people in Purvanchal lived a life smothered by poverty. “Old-timers would remember that our Gahmari babu had first drawn attention to the pain of this region,” said Modi, referring to the emotional speech made in Parliament by Gahmari in the presence of Nehru. The speech had left the entire Parliament shaken.“And with tears in his eyes, babuji described how people here used to sift through the gobar (dung) of animals for wheat and eat it,” said Modi. “But what did the Congress do,” he asked, accusing the Congress of being indifferent to Purvanchal’s problems.Modi then told voters how Nehru, moved by Gahmari’s description of poverty in Purvanchal, formed a panel, Patel Commission, to assess the backwardness of the region and suggest remedies to address it. The Congress formed the Patel Commission to “pull wool over people’s eyes”, said Modi. The report of the fact-finding panel, which outlined the necessary developments required to uplift Purvanchal, was “left to gather dust”, said Modi.The PM referred to the Patel Commission report on Purvanchal’s poverty to juxtapose it with the free ration scheme run by his government, and reach out to poor voters. “Modi is spending lakhs and crores on the free ration scheme so that the poor don’t face the same trouble they did under the rule of the Congress and SP,” said Modi.Ghazipur votes on June 1 in the last phase.What’s notable is that Modi had used the Gahmari incident from 1962 to target the Congress in 2016, when he promised to open all the files of the Patel Commission. “Pandit ji is gone. PMs came and went. I am the ninth PM from the State but nothing happened of that report,” Modi said in Ghazipur on November 14, 2016.On that day, Modi said Gahmari had told Nehru that the “poverty in East UP is so terrifying that people here sift through dung for grains of wheat and fill their stomachs after washing them.” If in 2016, Modi had referred to Gahmari’s address in Parliament with a promise to “finish Nehru’s incomplete work” and develop Purvanchal, in this election, ten years into his rule, he used it to highlight a free ration scheme, under which over 80 crore people would receive free foodgrains for the next five years simply because they are poor.Modi did not explain to voters what happened to his promise of opening the files of the Patel Commission. Or clarify if he would do so if he gets a third term.