Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday accused BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi of giving away 45,000 acres of precious farmland to Adani group at throwaway prices.
Hitting out at Modi at an election rally at Korba, the scion of Nehru-Gandhi family, said Adani group got the land by paying at the rate of one rupee per square meter but later earned huge profit by selling it out at eight hundred rupees per square meter.
Slamming the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Congress vice-president said his party wants to build “a country which do not discriminate between rich and poor” while the BJP wants to build two separate countries “one for poor and another for rich”.
At Korba seat where Union Minister Charan Das Mahant has been seeking re-election, Gandhi also said, “This election is not a fight between two persons instead it is a fight between two ideologies. While on one side, there is the Congress and United Progressive Alliance (UPA), while on the other side the Bharatiya Janata Party and National Democratic Alliance (NDA). There is a basic difference between the thinking of both”, he pointed out.
“We say, the development should take place in India and poor should be helped along with it. Poor should get the basic facilities like road and electricity,’’ he said.
“If lands are being taken away from them (poor people), the benefit should also reach to them. It is not that the benefits should go to a few industrialists only,’’ he added.
Gandhi said Chhattisgarh is not a poor State. It has everything starting from minerals, forest, and water but it’s people are poor.
“The wealth which belonged to you (the people of Chhattisgarh) is going to the hand of selected people. Poor, tribal and dalits are not benefiting from it,’’ he said.
Accusing the rival party for making tall claims, Gandhi said the poor people in Korba are not getting anything even though they are the victims of rising pollution.