By IANS,
Chennai: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi Thursday urged cadres of the Youth Congress to reach out to villages and strengthen the party at the grassroots level so that the Congress can come to power in Tamil Nadu at a future date.
Gandhi, on a two-day Tamil Nadu tour, met officials of the state Youth Congress at Tirunelvelli and Tirupur.
On Thursday morning, he reached Tirunelvelli from Madurai where he had spent the previous night.
Addressing the youth wing officials at Tirunelvelli, he urged them to focus their energies at the panchayat level so that the party can grow in strength.
He said the party’s youth wing cadres should meet the rural people and take remedial measures to alleviate their sufferings and ask them to follow only the Congress party’s ideals and policies and not of any other party.
Gandhi later reached Tirupur and met the Youth Congress officials there.
At the hosiery town of Tirupur, cadres belonging to BJP, Shiv Sena, and Hindu Makkal Katchi attempted to show black flags to Gandhi to protest his comments against Hindu organisations.
The protestors flew balloons with black flags near the venue where Gandhi was meeting the Youth Congress officials.
At Coimbatore, the police arrested around 30 people belonging to Shiv Sena for holding demonstrations against Gandhi.
Some people tied black ribbons to the legs of two doves and set them free to mark their protest.
The protests were against Gandhi’s statement to US Ambassador to India Timothy Roemer about radical Hindu groups being a greater threat to India than Islamic terror outfits like Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Gandhi’s statement was leaked by WikiLeaks recently.