The Congress once again accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of pursuing revenge politics, particularly towards party chief Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi, by shifting major projects out of their parliamentary constituencies.
“Only because the people of Amethi and Rae Bareli stood behind Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi and rejected Narendra Modi by defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party candidates in the last parliamentary elections, the Prime Minister is pursuing the politics of revenge by shifting all the major projects out of these two lok Sabha constituencies,” charged UP Congress Committee chairman Satyadeo Tripathi, while alleging that the National Democratic Alliance had started fresh move to shift Jagdishpur Paper Mill from Amethi to Maharastra.
``The Minister of Heavy Industries in the NDA government had already planned to shift the Jagdishpur Paper Mill project claiming that the Maharastra facilitate much more favourable situation for the Mill to run smoothly”, asserted Tripathi while highlighting that how one by one, all the major projects have been either shifted from the Amethi and Rae Bareli, or the NDA government stopped budget to ensure that they would stopped functioning automatically. ``NDA government had already withdrawn the Mega Food Park project form Amethi, and recently they made a move to shift the IIIT campus from Rahul Gandhi’s Parliamentary constituency”, he claimed.
Alleging that BJP was working to disturb all the developmental works done by the Congress in Amethi and other parts of the State, Tripathi said that the IIIT situated at Tikermafi village in Amethi was set up in 2005 by the efforts of local MP Rahul Gandhi and it is linked with the IIIT, Allahabad but now Union Minister for Human Resource Development, Smriti Irani wanted to get it shift to Allahabad.
Interestingly, Rahul Gandhi earlier already took the above matter in Parliament, and charged Modi of enjoying overseas when the farmers here were fighting for the survival following un-seasonal rains, hailstorm etc. “The move of BJP-led government has affected farmers and labourers of Amethi and 10 neighbouring districts. The Centre wanted to take revenge from me, but the move has affected farmers. Had the food park been set up, it would have changed the fate of farmers. By cancelling it, the Modi government has dealt a blow to farmers. He has snatched it from them and not from me. We will pressure the government to get it back,” Gandhi said during his last visit to the constituency.
Besides Rahul, Congress president Sonia Gandhi also took the above matter when she shot several letters to the Union Ministry reminding than that how due to apathetic approach and political rivalry, many key projects in her Parliamentary constituency Rae Bareli or of her son Rahul Gandhi in Amethi, were affected due to absence of adequate funds. She also highlighted the apathetic situation of Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Uran Academy(IGRUA) in Amethi. She said that the premier flight training institute was turning into ‘ grave’ situation. She has demanded release of subsidy for running IGRUA which was to be released in March 2015 for the last two fiscal years. “The academy has not been given subsidy since 2011 and the UPA government had approved the subsidy till 2013. But unfortunately the funds were not released by he NDA government,” she said.
The Rae Bareli MP also raised the issue of an agreement made between a Canadian firm Canadian Aviation Electronics(CAE) in which the foreign company had agreed to make the IGRUA profitable within three years time. The Academy was set up in 1985 by then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, and now there is a move to hike the pilot training fee beside the training programme had also been affected due to fund crunch. Besides, she also raised the issue of delay in the construction of AIIMS in her Rae Bareli constituency.