Launching a scathing attack on the BJP on the last day of campaign in the state on Tuesday, Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi said the saffron party was biased towards the rich and wealthy classes.
Rahul said it was this prejudice that had made the BJP object to his decision to take British Foreign Secretary David Miliband to his parliamentary constituency of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh in January.
Addressing an election meeting in support of party candidate Jivabhai Patel at the Dr Ambedkar Sports Ground, Rahul said the British minister had expressed his desire to see India. “So, I decided to take him to Amethi in the interiors of Uttar Pradesh, because the real India lives in villages,” he told the audience, mostly from nearby villages.
He said the BJP’s objection was that he should not have shown the poorer sections of the country to a foreigner, and instead, should have taken him to the streets of Delhi and metro cities. “Their reactions reflected the mentality of BJP leaders and their pro-rich bias,” he said, adding, “The poor and rural people are the future of India; I can’t hide them from the world.”
Taking a dig at the BJP’s 2004 poll campaign slogan of India Shining, he said it had failed because the poor and rural folk could not understand it as “the BJP had done nothing to improve their lot”. He said the BJP had opposed the UPA government’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme to provide a minimum of 100 days employment to rural people, and instead its government helped an industrialist with a huge soft loan. “The Congress is not against industry, but it wants a balanced growth in which both the poor and rich benefit and get an opportunity to grow and progress,” he said.
Reacting to L K Advani’s repeated remarks describing Manmohan Singh as a weak Prime Minister, he said it was for the first time in the country’s history of war on terror that Pakistan bowed before India after the Mumbai terror attacks, and peace finally returned to Kashmir. All this, he said, happened under Manmohan Singh.
Addressing another rally at Limbodhi in tribal Dahod, Rahul slammed senior BJP leader Jaswant Singh for “stooping before the militants in Kandahar,” and facilitating the swap of terrorists with hostages.
He vehemently condemned regional chauvinism as preached by certain parties in Maharashtra and preaching hatred against north Indians in Mumbai.
