Sonia Gandhi Targets BJP-RSS Links

Unrelenting with a blistering campaign, Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday tongue-lashed NDA prime ministerial hopeful LK Advani for calling Manmohan Singh a “weak” prime minister and said identity of the “slaves” of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was common knowledge.

“People know who functions as slaves of the RSS,” she was quoted as saying at an election rally in Bidar, Karnataka, by IANS.

“I ask: Advaniji is making ‘ulta-seeda’ (all sorts of) statements against Manmohan Singh. Does he take any decision independently without (an) RSS nod,” she was reported to have said while reading from a prepared text in Hindi.

In a reference to the BJP stalwart, she said, who described founder of Pakistan MA Jinnah as a secular person and virtually retracted the statement under pressure from the Sangh Parivar.

“What did the strong leader do? He retracted,” she poked.

In what is fast emerging as the central theme of the Congress campaign, Gandhi was all praise for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and said her party did not “scream and shout, but “acted and worked.”

She took the Opposition party to task over the handling of the Kandahar hijack and the attack on the Parliament House.

Who escorted terrorists as guests to Kandahar, she questioned.

Highlighting the diplomatic successes of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government she said: “Because of the determined action our government took, Pakistan had to admit its role in the Mumbai terror attack,” and defended the Indo-US civil nuclear agreement saying the pact will help provide electricity to every village in the country.

She termed the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, Rs. 81,000 crore farm loan waiver, mid-day meal scheme for school children and scholarship for poorer sections of the society as “historic measures taken by the UPA government under the leadership of Manmohan Singh.”

She dismissed claims of the UPA meting out step motherly treatment to the BJP state government led by chief minister Yeddyurappa in Karanataka saying: “We have given thousands of crores of rupees to Karnataka. There is no account of how the state had utilised the money. Looting is going on in the state. There is corruption, and law and order situation is worsening.”