New Delhi, November 15: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday demanded an apology from Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi for his statement on the migration of people from Uttar Pradesh to other states of India.
BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar said that the people of Uttar Pradesh were only migrating to other states because of the failed policies of the Congress Party in the past fifty years and of the state government in the past five years.
He further said that the people of Uttar Pradesh would make the Congress Party beggars in the forthcoming state elections.
“Like we have said that the people of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar don’t beg. They are not beggars; indeed they will make the Congress Party beggars. They did so in Bihar and they will do it in Uttar Pradesh too. And that’s why the Congress will suffer the same fate in UP (Uttar Pradesh) as they did in Bihar and hence the Congress’ attitude of not caring would not be appreciated,” said Javadekar.
“If people migrate to different states in search of employment due to their (Congress) strategies, and simultaneously if they call them ‘beggars’ then the people of UP will never tolerate it,” he added.
Rahul Gandhi, who kick-started the Congress Party’s campaign from great grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru’s parliamentary constituency of Phulpur on Monday, while addressing a rally told the thousands gathered that Uttar Pradesh was regressing under the leadership of ‘the mafia’ who runs the state.
“How long will you beg in Maharashtra (for work)? How long will you work as a labourer in Punjab? It will take only five years and the change will come,” Gandhi told the gathering, while asking them to give the Congress Party an opportunity to come to power in Uttar Pradesh.
The polls in Uttar Pradesh, scheduled in the early next year, are seen as an opportunity for the Congress party to re-establish a firm political base in the country”s fifth largest and most populous state, before the 2014 general elections to the Parliament.
Rahul Gandhi is determined to give a tough fight to the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) led by Mayawati in the Uttar Pradesh.
He often visits various parts of the state focusing equally on the lower caste Dalits, Muslims, socially backward classes and marginalised Hindus.
—-Agencies