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Uma: Sonia has done nothing for Rae Bareli
EXPELLED Bharatiya Janata Party leader and former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Uma Bharti on Saturday said neither the late Indira Gandhi nor Congress president Sonia Gandhi had alleviated poverty in Rae Bareli district. While Indira Gandhi represented the constituency in Lok Sabha earlier, Sonia does so now.
EXPELLED Bharatiya Janata Party leader and former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Uma Bharti on Saturday said neither the late Indira Gandhi nor Congress president Sonia Gandhi had alleviated poverty in Rae Bareli district.
While Indira Gandhi represented the constituency in Lok Sabha earlier, Sonia does so now.
Addressing a Press conference, Bharti, who is on Ram-Roti Yatra from Bhopal to Ayodhya, said she was moved by poverty in the district.
Asserting that the place was still in the throes of feudalism, she said Sonia only participated in photo sessions with the poor here.
It was “vote contractors”, and not the common man, who benefited from Rae Bareli’s high-profile representatives, she said.
She denied plans to float a new party and said the BJP would be compelled to set its own house in order.
Describing new BJP chief Rajnath Singh as an “elder brother”, she said she would keenly watch how he upheld the party’s principles of ‘swadeshi’, ‘swabhiman’, and ‘shuchita’.
She said all governments in UP in the past decade and a half were non-performing. It was only Kalyan Singh’s government in 1991 that did good work, she added.
Criticising the Congress for cheating people in the name of ‘roti’ and the BJP for doing so in the name of ‘Ram’, she said she would perform ‘Panchkosi parikrama’ once her yatra reached Ayodhya.
She also said former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had become a prisoner of corrupt elements in the BJP.
The yatra was initially supposed be taken out on March 12,2005, from Karimnagar in Andhra Pradesh, where maximum number of farmers had committed suicide, she said.
But the seven-month yatra could not be taken out because the then BJP chief LK Advani did not agree with it, she claimed.
“I have now taken out this yatra to seek justice following the recent events that took place in Bhopal during selection of the new chief minister,” said Bharti, who is accompanied by 2000 supporters. She will hold a public meeting at the Super Market here on Sunday.
