New Delhi: Blazing all guns against the government and media, Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said that those who took cots from the rally in Uttar Pradesh were branded as thieves but Vijay Mallya who ran away from the country with 9,000 crore rupees is called as defaulter.
“When farmers leave with cots, they are called chors (thieves). When an industrialist escapes with 9,000 crores, he’s called a defaulter,” he said in Uttar Pradesh, referring to liquor baron Vijay Mallya who has refused to return to India.
The first public meeting of Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday as part of his 2,500 km journey, that aims to cover 223 of Uttar Pradesh’s 403 Assembly constituencies, started with a fiasco when the locals indulged into a fight for the brand new khatiyas (wooden cots) after his Khat Sabha in Deoria ended.
It all started with a free for all as the locals pounced on the eatables and bottled water that were stored in a tent. A few people then picked up some cots and the crowd followed the suit. Within no time, only a few cots were left, that too because they were made of iron and too heavy to lift.
Rahul Gandhi, during the launch of his 2,500-km Kisan Yatra in election-bound Uttar Pradesh, unleashed a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of neglecting the plight of farmers and accused him of being biased towards the rich.
He said the Prime Minister and the Uttar Pradesh government have forgotten the farmers and he is undertaking this yatra in order to put pressure on the Centre to solve the farming crisis in India. He also said the Prime Minister wanted to waive off loans of the rich but wasn’t ready to do that in the case of farmers.
“Modiji must waive off loans taken by farmers in Uttar Pradesh and elsewhere in the country,” he said. “We have embarked on this yatra to know the problems of the farmers and to help Modiji understand the situation too,” the Congress leader added. He also talked about the sugar mills in Deoria and said there were 17 sugar mills in the district but all of them are closed now for which he blamed the Centre and the state government.
