The Hindu : Front Page : Non-Congress parties have pushed U.P. to brink: Sonia

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Tuesday, Apr 01, 2008
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Non-Congress parties have pushed U.P. to brink: Sonia

Atiq Khan

BSP regime has ignored NREP: Rahul
Rahul will join jail ‘bharo’ if need be

— Photo: PTI/Nand Kumar

Chalking out strategies: Congress president Sonia Gandhi with her son and party general secretary Rahul Gandhi at the party’s Uttar Pradesh State Convention in Kanpur on Monday.

KANPUR: Describing the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Samajwadi Party as the two sides of the same coin, Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Monday said that in the last 19 years Uttar Pradesh had witnessed deterioration ever since the non-Congress parties came to power in the State.

The non-Congress parties thrived on caste and communal agenda, using these as a vote-catching device, and were also guilty of opportunism and misleading and dividing society, she said.

Addressing a public meeting at Phoolbagh here after the conclusion of the two-day Pradesh Congress Committee convention, Ms. Gandhi attributed the development and progress of the State to her party. People’s problems multiplied under the other regimes, which ignored the plight of the common man.

Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi lashed out at the BSP government for turning a deaf ear to the problems of the poor.

It ignored the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme. Uttar Pradesh could not progress until youth were assured of education and jobs, he said.

Fill the jail

Earlier, speaking at the closing session of the convention at the Nanarao Park, Ms. Gandhi asked Congressmen to launch a jail ‘bharo’ to make the party the voice of the people. If the need arose, Mr. Gandhi would also go to jail with other party workers, she said.

Highlighting organisational weaknesses in Uttar Pradesh, she pulled up Congressmen for promoting self-interest at the cost of the party.

Fake membership was another cause of weakness and needed to be curbed, she said.

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