By IANS,
Lucknow: Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi had to change the venue of his rally in Uttar Pradesh’s Ambedkar Nagar after the local administration denied permission for the original spot.
The Congress leader has now settled for an alternative site, not very far from where he had originally sought the local administration’s clearance.
Local Congressmen readily agreed to submit another application seeking allotment of the ground which the administration was offering.
Meanwhile, in Lucknow, Mayawati’s multi-portfolio minister Naseemuddin Siddiqui told a press conference that the Congress has been allotted the ground that it had sought.
“Allotment of a ground for a political rally is no big deal… It is the Congress party which is trying to make a mountain out of a molehill only to gain political mileage.”
Commenting on the Congress party’s bid to woo Dalits, Siddiqui said: “The fact that the Congress general secretary had decided to hold a rally in Ambedkar Nagar and that too on Babasaheb Ambedkar’s birth anniversary shows how desperate that party is to woo Dalits.”
“But, no matter what tricks they try, they will not succeed in their real objective to mislead and misguide Dalits, who know full well that Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) alone is the true messiah of the downtrodden, the minorities and the poor,” Siddiqui added.
Earlier in the day, while addressing a press conference here, union Minister of State for Coal Shriprakash Jaiswal asserted that no one has the right to stop Rahul Gandhi from going anywhere or addressing a rally anywhere in the country.
“But we do not wish to make an issue out of a venue for a rally. We are confident that the rally would be a grand success and that is what is making the state government jittery,” he said.