Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi, who declared his solidarity with the villagers of western Uttar Pradesh, who are protesting at the manner in which the State government has been acquiring their land, took a delegation of farmers to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday, taking his battle against Mayawati one step further.
Apprising the Prime Minister of the situation in the villages of Greater Noida, where farmers have been agitating, he also showed Dr. Singh photographs of farmers and their families who were victims of violence.
Emerging from the meeting, Mr. Gandhi told journalists that he was “very concerned” over the developments in these villages, where people had been “killed,” women “raped” and houses burnt: “There is a 70-foot ash-pit there with dead bodies in it. Everybody in the village knows.”
He also stressed that the UPA government was committed to a new Land Acquisition Act and that hopefully, it would be passed in the next session of Parliament. “It is a complicated piece of legislation, but we are confident that the Land Acquisition Bill will be passed in the next session of Parliament.” Mr. Gandhi, who recently spent a day with the farmers but was arrested by the Mayawati government, said the farmers had expressed their desire to meet the Prime Minister. “I only facilitated their meeting with the Prime Minister.”
