Kicking off her election campaign in Uttar Pradesh, Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday attacked Chief Minister Mayawati for dismissing her ministers on election eve and asked whether this has cleansed her government.
“The present chief minister dismissed 21 of her ministers on election eve. She was not able to see their corruption in the past five years. I want to ask whether taking resignations made her government clean,” Ms. Gandhi said.
“Is this not cheating the people...not an attempt to cheat the people,” she asked.
Lashing out at non-Congress governments over the past 22 years in the state, Ms. Gandhi said that they had all ruined Uttar Pradesh. There had been no one to hear people’s voices as members of these parties had been involved in misdeeds.
“These parties have done nothing for the state during their governments; they have, however, filled their own pockets”, she said, adding that though there had been a lot of change and development in the country and the world, U.P. had been ruined by these non-Congress governments.
On various coalition governments in the state, she said all these parties had joined hands for opportunism and were the same. The Congress, on the other hand, was the only party which had never compromised with those dividing society.
The Congress president said the security and honour of the common man were at stake in U.P.
