By IANS
Jhansi : The battle of wits over the issue of carving a state of Bundelkhand out of Uttar Pradesh took a turn Thursday when Congress leader Rahul Gandhi put the ball back in Chief Minister Mayawati’s court.
While advocating for smaller states, Mayawati on Jan 15 publicly called upon the central government to create a separate Bundelkhand.
In response, Gandhi, MP from Amethi, told a well-attended public rally here: “We are all for a separate Bundelkhand. Now it is for the Uttar Pradesh government and the state legislature to pass a resolution in this regard.”
Gandhi, who earlier in the day presided over a marathon meeting of the Uttar Pradesh Congress coordination committee, told the gathering amid cheers, “We have unanimously agreed on the need for carving out an independent state of Bundelkhand.
“The Congress party had already tabled a resolution in this regard before the state assembly during the last session of the house. All that was required to be done now was an approval by the government and the state legislature where BSP (Bahujan Samaj Party) has a majority.”
Gandhi was on a 24-hour visit to poverty-ridden Bundelkhand region where starvation deaths and farmers’ suicides were on the rise.
After hopping to a village in each of the five Bundelkhand districts – Banda, Hamirpur, Mahoba, Jalaun and Jhansi – where he listened to grievances of common people, he addressed a rally in Jhansi town.
This was his first major foray into the state’s worst spot and was seen as a significant move towards rebuilding the badly eroded Congress base in the country’s most populous and therefore politically crucial state.
The Congress could win only three of the 21 state legislature seats in this region where four seats went to the Samajwadi Party and the BSP won 14.
Moved by the situation in the region, Gandhi urged Mayawati “to visit Bundelkhand and apprise herself of the plight of the common man”.
“I remember my father (late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi) saying that only 15 paise out of a rupee actually reaches the target beneficiary of a development oriented scheme. But now my experience tells me that this has been further reduced to just about five paise,” he said.
Blaming the state government for the plight of Bundelkhand, he said: “The central government has been providing the necessary funds, but implementation of schemes has to be done by the state machinery, where rampant corruption was frustrating our efforts.”