By IANS,
Lucknow : Congress MP Rahul Gandhi may have earned much appreciation for his speech in defence of the nuclear deal during the trust motion debate in the parliament. But Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati is not amused.
In a scathing attack on the scion of India’s first political family, Mayawati sought to impress upon a massive rally of her party workers here Saturday that Gandhi’s claims were “false and misleading”.
Referring to him as “Yuvaraj” (prince) of the Congress party, she said, “Rahul might have made tall claims about the nuclear deal coming to transform the energy profile of the country and thereby the lives of common people in the country; but I would like to ask him why the rest of the world has not been able to promote this sector?”
She said, “Even the advanced nations of the world like United States admitted that nuclear generated power was 60 percent more expensive than thermal generated power; that was the reason the US had not set up any new nuclear power plants for many years now.”
Drawing attention of the audience to the hazards of nuclear energy, she even referred to the Chernobyl disaster in the erstwhile Soviet Union where a blast in the nuclear power plant had led to a catastrophe.
Embarking upon the dire shortage of uranium – the raw material for nuclear energy – she asked, “Even the entire global uranium reserve would not last 50 years, so how could such nuclear power plants be sustained?”
She went on to point out, “Do you know that only six percent of the world’s power production comes from nuclear energy.”
Urging her audience not to get carried away by “Rahul Gandhi’s false propaganda”, she lambasted him saying, “He is busy claiming that the nuclear deal will one day bring about removal of poverty in this country, but I would like to tell him to stop misleading and misguiding common masses. After all it was not as if he is not aware of the reality.”
Referring to Rahul Gandhi’s forays into Dalit villages, she remarked: “All that drama of sleeping in a Dalit’s home or having a meal with a Dalit family will not help.”
Mayawati did not even spare former prime ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. “It was Indira Gandhi who started this drama of promising to remove poverty; the same drama was staged by her son Rajiv Gandhi and now being carried forward by his son and Congress prince Rahul Gandhi. But let me tell you, none other than the BSP can remove this poverty, arrest the price rise or look into your well-being.”