|
Polls in Bihar: Sonia plays minority card,
attacks Nitish Kumar
Monday, October 18, 2010 07:55:01 PM,
IANS
|
|
Patna:
The Congress is committed to secularism and has never joined hands
with non-secular forces, party president Sonia Gandhi said Monday
while launching a scathing attack on the Nitish Kumar government
ahead of the Bihar assembly elections beginning this week.
Gandhi, who also stressed on the state government not utilising
central funds for development, said at an election rally in
Kishanganj: "We have lost elections but never discarded
secularism. The Congress has never joined hands with non-secular
party to gain power."
Hoping to attract the votes of the Muslim community, which
constitutes over 67 percent of the population in Kishanganj, about
350 km from here, she said the Congress was committed to
secularism.
Attacking the alliance government of the Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) and the Janata Dal-United (JD-U) in the state, she said
Nitish Kumar claimed he was a secularist but was running a
government with a party opposed to secularism.
Gandhi reminded the people of Kishanganj that Nitish Kumar, who
now opposed Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's poll
campaigning in Bihar, had neither resigned nor condemned the BJP
leader when Gujarat was aflame with riots. He continued as union
minister in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA)
government.
"It is enough to show that Nitish Kumar's stand against Modi now
is nothing but a double standard," she said.
"Yeh janta ke aankh mein dhool jhonkne ke alawa kya hai? (What is
this but not deceiving the people)," Gandhi asked.
According to the Congress chief, who is on a daylong campaign for
her party before the first phase of the elections begins Oct 21,
New Delhi had provided crores of rupees for the development of
Bihar but it had not percolated down to the poor.
"It is a sad thing that the Bihar government failed to spend and
utilise the funds provided by the central government for
development of the state."
"In Kishanganj itself, the central government provided huge funds
as per welfare schemes to be implemented in a region with minority
population but major part of it was neither spent nor utilised. It
appears the Bihar government has no time to spend money on the
welfare of Muslims," Gandhi said.
Citing another example, she said the state government had failed
to set up a centre of the Aligarh Muslim University in Kishanganj.
"The state government has failed to provide land for it."
She appealed to the voters to give the Congress a chance after two
decades of non-Congress rule.
Kishanganj comprises the four assembly constituencies of
Kishanganj, Kochadhaman, Bahadurgarh and Thakurgarh. The Congress,
which is contesting all 243 seats on its own, has put up Muslim
candidates in all the four constituencies.
The six-phase elections in Bihar begin Oct 21 and end Nov 20.
|
|
Home |
Top of the Page |
|
 |
|
Comment on this article |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
 News Pick |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Quick links