Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday blasted Samajwadi Party president Mulayanm Singh Yadav in the latter's pocket-burrow in Mainpuri.
"Mulayam Singh Yadav is busy making tall promises, assuring free electricity, free water and has also gone to the extent of promising free treatment abroad to common people suffering from major ailments. But I wish to ask him whether he did any bit of these things during his stints as chief minister?" Rahul said at an election rally in Mainpuri.
"Mulayam's track record says that during his three stints as chief minister, the people of Uttar Pradesh received only few hours of electricity; only thing they received were bills for electricity the people never saw," he pointed out.
In his typical communicative style, Rahul went on to ask the crowd whether they had been happy during the regimes of Samajwadi Party, Bharatiya Janata Party or Bahujan Samaj Party. Pat came a thunderous "No" that encouraged the Gandhi scion to further lambast Mulayam.
According to him, "The state's youth, which had the capability of transforming Uttar Pradesh, but because of absence of employment avenues here, they had to migrate to other states to earn their livelihood."
He lamented, "When Delhi slept, workers from UP made the metro, but today they do not have the resources to travel in that very metro."
He went on to add how the Congress party decided to evolve a scheme like Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act "to ensure at least 100 days of employment in a year to people in the rural areas."
He regretted how MNREGA was discouraged by Mulayam Singh Yadav who refused to implement the scheme in UP during his stint. "It was an irony that he was now promising unemployment allowance to the youth," he quipped.
Rahul said, "Mulayam Singh is also claiming to convert Bundelkhand into Israel but when that very region was hit by a sever drought during his chief ministership, he simply ignored the demands of the people."
The Congress celebrity added, "Subsequently, I took the people of Bundelkhand to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who promptly agreed to give the area a special economic package of Rs 8,000 crore."
He however said, "But the money never reached the people because of Mayawati's magic elephant, who ate it up."
While echoing his role in getting weavers and farmers a massive loan-waiver across the country, Rahul Gandhi made a passionate appeal to the people to vote for the Congress by adding, "You need hospitals, schools, colleges and employment, which can come only with progress, that can be truly ensured if a Congress government is installed here."
