Varanasi, May 18 (IANS): Giving a call to uproot the Mayawati regime in Uttar Pradesh, Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi said here Wednesday that the plight of the poor and downtrodden in the state was enough reason for her government to go.
Blasting the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) government for defending its police action on the agitating farmers of Bhatta Parsaul in Greater Noida, Gandhi threatened to take the Congress battle he had put up for farmers to every village in the state.
"The flame we lit in Bhatta Parsaul will be carried to every village of the state. We will show the UP government what the Congress is capable of doing for the good of the poor and the downtrodden," Gandhi told a convention of party functionaries here.
While emphasising that there was no dearth of issues in UP, Gandhi said "all we need to do is to spread out to every nook and corner of the state and address the issues."
"I am prepared to go all over the state and also have plenty of time at hand to do so", he told the gathering amidst cheers.
Refuting the state government's repeated claims about restoration of normal life in the violence-hit village where a farmer-police clash left four people dead earlier this month, Gandhi said: "The state government is claiming that everything is normal in the village, but the prohibitory orders under section 144 are still in place."
He also sought to know "why the government was shying away from ordering a judicial probe if it really believed in its own much emphasised claim that all was fine in Bhatta Parsaul.
"Why is the village still deserted as locals fled the place because of police atrocities," he asked.
Gandhi also said that a local sub-divisional magistrate conveniently attributed the prevailing panic among the locals to infiltration by some Maoist groups in and around the village.
Dispelling rumours about a possible pre-election alliance with the Samajwadi Party, Gandhi said that the Congress would once again go it alone in the 2012 state assembly elections.
"All kinds of speculations were made during the last Lok Sabha election about our alliance with the Samajwadi Party that had offered us 10 of the 80 seats. But we chose to not only fight it out alone, but also make our mark," he pointed out.