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BJP snatching tribals’ land for businessmen friends: Priyanka
Priyanka Gandhi Vadra promised tribal voters that she would uplift the existing health mechanisms and slammed the BJP for 'usurping' their lands.
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In the final leg of campaigning for the bypoll in Wayanad Lok Sabha seat, Congress candidate Priyanka Gandhi Vadra promised the tribal voters that she would uplift the existing health mechanisms and slammed the BJP for usurping their lands and gifting them to big businessmen.
Addressing a rally in Naikatty near in Sulthan Bathery town, Priyanka reached out to the tribal communities, which form nearly 19% of the population of Wayanad district.
“The tribal areas have difficulty accessing education, especially higher education. These areas have so much potential. You work hard to educate your children, you take loans to pay their fees, you want them to have a bright future. Yet the opportunities are limited,” she said, adding that she would try her best to set up a government medical college in the district.
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She said former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi shared a “deep connection” with the tribal population of India. “She always told them that their way of living — the way they are connected to forests, land and water — was the right way of living. It was on the basis of this understanding that the UPA government at the Centre brought the Forest Rights Act, MGNREGA, right to education to help these people fight for their rights to livelihood and education,” she said.
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Slamming the BJP-led government at the Centre, Priyanka alleged that the BJP was attacking the same rights granted by the previous UPA government.
“BJP is snatching the land of the tribals and handing them over to the businessmen friends. The forests rights act is being diluted. The politics of BJP is based on division and negativity. All its policies are aimed at benefiting a few businessmen and under its policies, farmers are suffering across India. You have to fight to retain your basic rights,” she said.
The Congress leader also promised to uplift the tourism possibilities in the district, especially eco-tourism and spiritual tourism. She cited how the July 30 landslides in Chooralmala near Meppadi had sparked fears among tourists about visiting Wayanad. “I wish we could tell the world that there is nothing to be afraid of. That the landslide took place in a very small area but this whole land is so beautiful and there is so much to see. There is a lot of potential for tourism,” she said.
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Priyanka in her speech spoke about the constituency’s prolonged problems like the night travel ban to Karnataka, the escalating human-wildlife conflict and the recent notification declaring several settlements as ecologically sensitive areas.
“While I would like to focus on developing tourism here, strengthening agriculture, I know these problems are deeply affecting you and we have to keep struggling and fighting for them to be resolved,” she said.
Priyanka will be joined by her brother and Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Monday when both leaders are scheduled to hold roadshows in Sulthan Bathery and Thiruvambady as campaigning concludes in the evening. Priyanka, in her debut election, is up against Sathyan Mokeri of CPI and Navya Haridas of BJP.
The bypoll was necessitated after Rahul vacated the seat in favour of his second seat of Rae Bareilly. Rahul had won the Wayanad seat in June by a margin of 3.64 lakh votes.
