With Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi away in Kerala, his sister Priyanka Vadra stepped in on Wednesday to hit back at Union Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani, asking her why no IIIT was being set up in Amethi.
Priyanka, who is on a two-day visit to Rae Bareli which adjoins Amethi and is her mother Sonia Gandhi’s Lok Sabha constituency, was responding to Ms. Irani’s veiled allegations on Tuesday that the Nehru-Gandhi family had made only “hollow” promises to the people of the constituency all these years.
“They said Smriti Irani has done something for Amethi. First she should tell us why she is not setting up an IIIT here. The youths are facing a lot of problems and this is her department. Why is she not looking into it,” Priyanka told reporters here.
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Soon after, Ms Irani, who was holding a press conference in Midnapore in West Bengal, responded saying that Ms. Vadra had not done her “homework.” “There is an off campus of IIIT Allahabad in Amethi. What is astounding is that while the Gandhi family has ruled the bastion for 60 years, they have done absolutely nothing,” she said.
“And now, a winning candidate is asking a losing candidate to develop his constituency — a constituency his family has been reigning for over 60 years,” she added. Ms. Irani said she was “expecting such an attack” because of her presence at a recent tour of Amethi.
Ms. Irani, who unsuccessfully contested the last Lok Sabha elections from Amethi against Mr. Rahul Gandhi, was on a day-long tour of Amethi and Rae Bareli on Tuesday during which she made an indirect attack on the Nehru-Gandhi family, saying that after years of promises, development work would now start soon.
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“The grandparents said it and now he [Rahul] is making promises. They all had been making promises, but the people here are yet to have facility of railway line. This time the work will start soon,” she had said.