By IANS,
Erode (Tamil Nadu) : Congress president and United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi here Thursday underlined the need for augmenting India’s energy needs through nuclear power.
Addressing a gathering of Congress workers here for just 12 minutes, Gandhi said the nation’s farmers needed low-cost power – a need that could only be supplemented by atomic power stations.
“This great nation of one billion plus, of which farmers form the largest majority, has a crying need for low-cost power that can only be made possible by generation of energy from nuclear reactors,” Gandhi said.
The UPA chairperson, however, did not make any direct reference to the India-US nuclear imbroglio or the hardships of farmers and industrialists here due to the shortage of power.
There were some anxious moments when the crowd it was learnt that the aircraft carrying Gandhi developed a snag and had to be grounded for sometime in Bangalore – thus delaying her arrival in Coimbatore en route to this heavily guarded textile city.
Gathering clouds almost resulted in the cancellation of Gandhi’s outing. But it only cut her speech short.
Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram translated her speech into Tamil.
Situated 300 km southwest of state capital Chennai, this textile town was heavily guarded by the police in the wake of threats of protests by farmers and small power loom owners against the electricity shortage that has crippled output in this district.