Mandya, Karnataka: Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Monday lashed out at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for “making fun” of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and asserted that the “whole party stands behind him”.
“They make fun of our party, they make fun of our prime minister,” she told a huge Congress rally in this town, about 80km from Bengaluru.
“The whole party stands behind the prime minister,” Gandhi declared at the rally held to thank the people of Karnataka for electing the Congress to power in the state in the May 5 assembly elections.
The rally was also intended to thank the people of Mandya and neighbouring Bangalore Rural Lok Sabha constituencies for electing Congress candidates in the August 21 bypolls to the two seats.
Gandhi said the BJP “divides people” while “we bind people together”.
She said the BJP had tried to scuttle the “historic” Food Security Bill in parliament by saying it was against farmers. “We are proud of our farmers and farmers will always be the centre of our policies,” she added.
UPA achievements
Terming the Food Security Bill, Land Acquisition Bill, RTI and measures to protect interests of women as “historic”, Gandhi said “no other government has achieved what the UPA [United Progressive Alliance government] has been able to in the last 10 years”.
She questioned why the BJP did not bring these bills when it led the central government or was in power in Karnataka. The BJP lost to the Congress in the May assembly election.
“They do not care for you,” Gandhi told the rally.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee president G. Parameshwara, former Karnataka chief minister S.M. Krishna, who hails from Mandya, union ministers Mallikarjun Kharge, M. Veerappa Moily, Oscar Fernandes, Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh, popular Kannada actor and state minister M.H. Ambareesh, who also belongs to Mandya, and newly elected Lok Sabha members — popular Kannada film actor Ramya from Mandya and D.K. Suresh from Bangalore Rural — shared the dais with Gandhi.
