Targeting Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said: “Today, he is not there with you. His anger over injustice is no longer visible. Both Mulayam Singh and Mayawati have become big leaders and they do not feel for the poor anymore. They do not come to you and travel only by helicopters.”
“People were killed in Bhatta-Parsaul but the Samajwadi leaders were sitting in their rooms. They blame us for everything but it is the Congress that brought the land acquisition bill and it is the Opposition which is opposing it,” he said to a thunderous applause at a meeting of party workers in Bahraich.
Mounting a fresh attack on UP chief minister Mayawati, Mr Gandhi said that the chief minister does not bother about the people of the state. He recalled that the chief minister, in a rally in October 2007, had rejected the NREGS saying that it offered temporary relief even though the scheme has benefited millions across the country and is one of the most popular schemes of the UPA government.
“I recently visited a government hospital that had no patients but the painting work was on in full swing. The painters told me that the hospital was being given a fresh coat of paint because the chief minister was visiting the hospital. There were no patients, no nurses, no doctors but this obviously did not concern the chief minister because she does not know what is happening around her. She does not come to your house and she does not interact with you,” he said.
Recalling his grandmother, the late Indira Gandhi, the Congress leader said that when he was still a child, she had told him that if you want to understand the poor and poverty then leave Delhi and go to their houses. “This has remained ingrained in my heart,” he said.
Mr Gandhi struck an emotional chord with the audience when he said that the Congress derives its strength from the common man who remains the focal point of all party and government policies.
“The governments of Samajwadi Party, BJP and BSP have all failed in this state. The successive governments in the past two decades have done nothing to alleviate people’s standard of living,” he pointed out.