AICC vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Friday retraced the path of his grandmother and former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, by starting off his ‘padayatra’ from the same place and dais, as was used by Indira Gandhi in 1979 at Obula Devara Cheruvu.
Mr. Gandhi, who started off his visit at 9:30 a.m., after garlanding the statue of Ambedkar at the village, moved to the YSR Circle, where he garlanded the statue of former Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy. Speaking from the dais erected near YSR Circle, after distributing cheques worth Rs. 50,000 each to the families of 47 farmers who had committed suicide, he said that he didn’t accept the “idea of an India in which farmers, labourers, weavers and hardworking people saw no future for themselves or their children”.
“I observed when my sisters [families of deceased farmers] spoke to me that they had no hope left for their future. I assure you that the Congress party, myself and the PCC president shall fight for your future. There will be a bright future for you. We will fight and ensure it,” he said.
Starting off his padayatra, in tow with a phalanx of Congress leaders from the across the State, Mr. Gandhi met students at a school on the way before he visited the house of Y. Harinath Reddy, a farmer who had committed suicide owing to debt. At Reddy’s house in Mamillakuntapalli, Mr. Gandhi mingled freely with his family members and promised his wife to make arrangements to meet the educational expenses of their children.
During his interaction with SHG women at Daburuvaripalli, he tore into the TDP government for “ridiculing the women of the State and lowering their self esteem’ by making them defaulters and closing the doors of the bank with just one speech. You [State government] have erased years of confidence that the women had built amongst themselves and with banks with the help of the Congress governments in one stroke,” he said.
Drawing a parallel between Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Mr. Rahul said both of them spent more time abroad than with people. “Before elections, he was Chandrababu Naidu. After elections, he has become Videshi Babu,” Mr. Gandhi quipped. Mr Gandhi ended his campaign with a speech at Kondakamarla village where he interacted with migration labour and tore into the NDA government for watering down the NREGS scheme, which, he said, had eliminated migration from the district in just five years of its implementation.
