Name Atal's heir: Sonia

Sonia Gandhi has said the people had the right to know who would succeed Vajpayee as he had recently said his successor's name had been finalised.

Seeking to turn the tables on her foreign origin issue, Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday said the people had the right to know who would succeed Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee as he had recently said his successor's name had been finalised.

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"If the Prime Minister knows who his successor is, the people have a right to know who it is," she told an election meeting at the Samsi College grounds in Malda district.

The Congress president, in her brief 11-minute speech, said it had become very difficult to understand what Vajpayee was saying 'these days' as "the Prime Minister says something different and contrary every day."

Stating that crore of rupees had been spent on 'India Shining' advertisement by the BJP, she asked "but what is the real achievement?"

NDA's achievement, Sonia alleged, was record corruption in the past six years, including the infamous Coffin Scam.

Sonia said that BJP stalwarts who had distanced themselves during the Freedom Movement could never do anything good for the people.

She alleged it was the BJP which had opposed all development projects taken up during the prime ministerships of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.

Turning to the Left Front government in West Bengal she said it was more concerned about clinging to power than in serving the people.

If the Congress came to power at the Centre than the problems of unemployment, that of farmers and weaker sections would be given top priority, she said.