Hitting out at BJP's prime ministerial candidate L K Advani, who has repeatedly criticized the Manmohan Singh government for "having failed to contain terrorism", AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi reminded the BJP of the way it had conceded defeat to terrorism in 1999 when the NDA government sent its emissary to Kandahar in Afghanistan to negotiate with terrorists who had hijacked an Indian Airlines plane and even released one of them imprisoned in the country's jail.
"The Congress would never have done that," Rahul asserted.
The AICC general secretary was on a whirlwind tour of Lohardaga and Ramgarh to campaign for Congress candidates Rameswar Oraon and Saurabh Narayan Singh respectively.
"After the Mumbai attack Prime Minister Manmohan Singh exerted so much of diplomatic pressure on Pakistan that the latter is now on the backfoot on cross-border terrorism," he said.
The Opposition had no concrete issue during elections, Rahul said adding all that the Opposition has done in recent elections is hop from one issue to another.
Reiterating that the Congress is a party of the "aam admi", poor and backward, Rahul claimed that the Opposition had never thought about the poor or development of the country.
In his short speech, the AICC general secretary enumerated what the Congress had done for the poor, tribals and backwards by way of NREGA, mid-day meal and other schemes.
Arriving at the CCL grounds of historically famous Ramgarh where the Congress held its pre-Independence conference in 1940, Rahul, however, could not arouse the excitement and exhilaration among the crowd which his mother Sonia and sister Priyanka have always successfully achieved.
In fact, the 38-year-old Rahul appeared tired and somewhat bored with his hurricane tour of Bihar and Jharkhand. He sat almost quiet at the elevated dais in Ramgarh. Instead, the two choppers which heralded his arrival evoked more thrill than his speech.
"I appeal to you to vote for Saurabh so that we can have more and more youths in Parliament," he said.
