LUCKNOW: The three-day visit of Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to Amethi and Rae Bareli culminated in a 65-km road show to the temple town of Ayodhya on Friday. Priyanka is the third Gandhi scion to visit Ayodhya just ahead Lok Sabha elections. Nearly three decades ago, in 1989, her father Rajiv Gandhi, the then Prime Minister, visited the temple town and had launched his election campaign from Ayodhya.
Almost three decades later, in September 2016, Rahul Gandhi visited Ayodhya becoming the first Gandhi to visit temple town after the demolition of Babri structure in 1992. He had not only skipped a darshan of Lord Ram but also a reference of Ram in the land of Ram. He had restrained himself to a small stopover at Hanumangarhi temple, Priyanka also followed his footprints and winded up her road show by having darshan at the same temple of Lord Hanuman.
However, during her road show, Priyanka launched a blistering attack on PM Modi accusing him of ignoring the poor and deprived even of his own constituency Varanasi. She asked him if he had visited any village during the last five years.
“The PM finds time to travel the world from US to Japan, China to Africa, but he doesn't have time for his own people,” she claimed while addressing a gathering at Adilpur, a location en route her road show to Ayodhya.
“When I asked people in Varanasi, if the PM visits villages, they said no. I was surprised. I was thinking that with such a strong campaign, he might have done something but while embracing the world
he forgot his own people,” she averred.
“While the farmers are pressed under rising debts in Modi regime, uplift of poor is not on government’s agenda,” she said. She accused the Centre of helping a handful of crorepatis but having no money
to waive off farmers’ loan. “This government priority is to make the rich richer, but no concern for poor and needy,” she maintained.
Without taking the names, the Congress leader claimed that the Central government led by the BJP was anti-democracy, anti-people, anti-farmer and anti-institution. “They can go to any extent to get
the power. This is a fight to save the country, the constitution and the democracy,” she stated.
“They have been lying to the people for the last five years. This is the weakest government in the political history of the country,” said Priyanka. She also blamed the present dispensation for
shutting down MGNREGA scheme and claimed that workers under the scheme had not been paid for six months.
Earlier, starting off from Kumarganj on Friday forenoon, her caravan, protected by a huge contingent of SPG and state police, reached Hanumangarhi in Ayodhya at 5:30 in the evening. During her road show, the Congress general secretary stopped at nine locations to receive people’s greetings and hold small interactions.