Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday mounted a frontal attack against the Narendra Modi-led Government saying that the country had witnessed a surge in communal violence since the BJP-led NDA came to power.
Addressing the office-bearers of the Kerala PCC at Thiruvananthapuram in her first-ever party programme outside Delhi after the last lok Sabha election, Sonia alleged that there was a “deliberate” attempt to divide people on religious lines. Sonia’s statement came just days after her son and party vice-president Rahul Gandhi made similar remarks.
“Incidents of communal violence in North Indian States, especially in States like Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, has increased in the 11 weeks of NDA rule. During the UPA 1 and UPA 2, there had been no such occurrence,” she said at the function organised at Indira Bhavan, the State Congress headquarters, as part of the party’s Quit Violence Week.
“More than 600 incidents of communal violence had occurred in UP and almost as many had taken place in Maharashtra. What we believe, and what is critical, is that these incidents of violence were created deliberately to divide the society on religious lines,” she said. Sonia also criticised the Modi Government for its stand on the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.
Criticising the NDA regime for its failure to express solidarity with the Palestinian people over Israeli assaults on Gaza, the Congress president said, “In the lok Sabha, we were unable to initiate a discussion but in the Rajya Sabha we were able to take up the discussion. We have always expressed our solidarity with the Palestinians.”
Thanking the Kerala unit of the Congress for its bright performance in the last lok Sabha polls when the party had met with terrible losses in most other States, Sonia asked the KPCC to carry forward that momentum into the local bodies elections due in September, 2015 and the Assembly polls in 2016.