By IANS,
Lucknow : Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi Friday described Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party (SP) as “the only opponents” in the state assembly polls, while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was “on ventilator”.
“Dethrone BSP; defeat SP in the forthcoming assembly elections to bring Congress in the state. I would not ask the same for BJP…I don’t count BJP (among our opponents)… BJP is on ventilator, that too would go off after the elections are over,” Gandhi told a gathering in his third speech in Siddharthnagar, some 250 km from Lucknow.
The Congress leader Tuesday embarked upon a five-day mass contact programme ahead of the state assembly polls due early next year.
In an indirect attack to Mayawati-led BSP government, Gandhi said, “An elephant (BSP’s poll symbol) in Lucknow is eating the central government’s funds meant for the development of the state.”
“But, this time the people in Uttar Pradesh have decided to drive away the elephant in order to prevent the funds from being eaten away…There is no shortage of developmental funds…The only problem is that the funds we release from the centre are not reaching to the poor…They are being misused by BSP ministers,” alleged Gandhi.