Rahul Gandhi accuses UP govt of failure to lend support to drought-hit Bundelkhand

Banda: Rahul Gandhi on Friday accused the Uttar Pradesh government of failure to lend support to improve situation in the Bundelkhand region, which has been battling continuous drought. “The requirement in Bundelkhand is different and it needs to be addressed differently,” he said at a ‘khat sabha’. [caption id=“attachment_3008010” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Rahul Gandi during his khat sabha. PTI[/caption] Rahul recalled that the Congress-led UPA government had given a special package to the area, but the SP government in Uttar Pradesh did not lend support to improve the situation in the region. The Congress vice president was speaking in course of his ‘Deoria to Dilli kisan yatra’ in Bundelkhand region, which has been facing continuous drought. Attacking the Narendra Modi-led Central government on the much-debated Land Acquisition Act, the Congress leader said the UPA government had brought the bill on land acquisition by talking to all stakeholders, which was in the interest of farmers. “But Modi had tried to make it (the bill) ineffective to help those who are responsible for committing maximum corruption in the country,” he said. “When we were in the government, we talked about roads and education…,” Rahul said, adding that though BJP and other parties raised questions on the issue of loan waiver of farmers, the UPA government went ahead in announcing Rs 60,000 crore package to provide relief to the farming community by waiving loans of small and marginal farmers. During his visit ahead of the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly election, Rahul met family members of freedom fighter Vishweshwar Bajpai in Badausa and had lunch with them. The Congress vice president also offered prayers at the Kamtanath temple before embarking on the Kisan Yatra. A woman asked Rahul at the ‘khat sabha’ held in Poddar Inter College in Sitapur about his promise of “karz maaf aur bijli half” (loan waiver and half power rates) alleging the region was not even getting four hours of power supply, to which he said Congress was neither in power at the Centre nor in UP. However, his reply apparently failed to satisfy the woman. Meanwhile, Rahul visited Rabbani Madarsa and held a road show at Amar Talkies crossing, where he garlanded a statue of late prime minister Indira Gandhi. He later spoke to anganwadi workers and assured them that he would raise their demand regarding wage hike in Lok Sabha.