Rahul Gandhi woos Muslims with quota promise
Saturday December 10, 2011 11:45:40 PM,
IANS
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Lucknow: Congress
general secretary Rahul Gandhi Saturday tried to woo Uttar
Pradesh's Muslim population ahead of the 2012 assembly elections
by assuring them that a new reservation policy would soon be in
place for them.
"We will keep our commitment of providing reservation to
minorities in the state," Gandhi told a gathering of party
office-bearers at the state Congress headquarters here.
"We will do it soon," he declared amidst applause.
Gandhi is on a two-day visit to the state capital to interact with
party functionaries as well as candidates handpicked for the
forthcoming polls.
"You must understand that the Congress was getting back to the
main arena of elections in the state after a gap of nearly two
decades; we were virtually out of the political battleground
between 1991 and 2007, after which we got down to re-building the
party from a scratch," he said in a reminder of his active
involvement in state affairs in 2007.
He called upon party members to work hard for victory in 2012. "If
you all take a vow and have the determination to win the coming
election in Uttar Pradesh, I am sure nothing can stop you from
attaining your goal," he said.
Gandhi also warned against infighting. "We must fight the election
unitedly," he said.
"Let it be very clear that action would be taken against those who
fail to work together - no matter how high and mighty the person
be, he would not be spared," he said.
He described the ruling Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the
Samajwadi Party (SP) as the potential opponents and dismissed the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as a spent force.
"Successive governments of the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj
Party were largely responsible for the rampant corruption and
crime in the state, so we have to go all out to fight them," he
said.
Criticising the opposition parties' objection to Foreign Direct
Investment (FDI) in retail, he said: "We wanted to bring in FDI as
a solution to the unabated price rise; but the entire opposition -
the BSP, the BJP and the SP - joined hands to stall the move."
Gandhi would be in Lucknow till Sunday evening before returning to
Delhi. He would be back in Uttar Pradesh for a five-day mass
contact programme commencing Dec 13.
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