By IANS,
New Delhi : Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi along with Uttar Pradesh party chief Rita Bahuguna Joshi and other party leaders Tuesday met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and urged him to set up a separate development authority for the Bundelkhand region, which he alleged was reeling under poverty.
“Legislators and leaders from Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi met the prime minister. We have demanded a separate development authority for Bundelkhand region,” Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh told reporters after the meeting.
Singh said Rahul Gandhi also demanded that all the funds meant for Bundelkhand, which spans Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, be channelised through this development authority in order to eradicate poverty there. “These steps are necessary to check the worsening situation in the region which is reeling under poverty, illiteracy and underdevelopment,” he said.
Gandhi had visited the region last year and described it as on the verge of collapse. Blaming the Mayawati government for the poverty and lack of development, the Congress leader said the local administration had failed to deliver, forcing people to migrate elsewhere.
Rita Bahuguna Joshi, Union Minister of State for Rural Development Pradeep Jain and Congress leaders from both the states were part of the delegation.
However, the ruling Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in Uttar Pradesh described Rahul Gandhi’s meeting with the prime minister as a “political gimmick”.
“This is Rahul Gandhi’s political gimmick,” Vijay Bahadur Singh, general secretary of the BSP’s parliamentary party, told reporters.
Singh said if the Congress party cared for Bundelkhand then instead of spending Rs.3,000 crore on the 2010 Commonwealth Games the money could have been spent to solve the acute water problem in the region.
Singh also said that Gandhi is doing everything to weaken the Mayawati government.
“The Congress is scared of the Mayawati government because for the last 18 years the state was run by coalition parties, but in 2007 the BSP came to power with absolute majority. So the Congress is trying to weaken the Mayawati government,” Singh alleged.
Meanwhile, Rahul Gandhi is travelling to Lucknow to address a meeting of the state Congress coordination committee Aug 4.
Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee spokesman Subodh Srivastava told IANS: “Among the issues to be taken up for discussion at the meet would be the state’s law and order situation, economic backwardness as well as the threat of communalism.”
This would be Rahul Gandhi’s first address to the UPCC since the April-May Lok Sabha elections. He is expected to hold a closed-door meeting with newly elected MPS as well as Congress MLAs from the state.