Lok Sabha elections 2009:Sonia Gandhi’s Gujarat visit reports

Following are news reports of Sonia Gandhi’s Gujarat visit from various news agencies, just presented here, so that you can study

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Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Friday slammed the Gujarat Government for dilly-dallying over advancing low interest loan to farmers.

Sonia Gandhi termed the BJP-ruled State Government’s attitude as pro-capitalist at the cost of the poor and rural folks.

“I am not surprised that the big industrialists are given thousands of crores loans at normal rates of interest which they pay after 20 years. But I feel sad that when our Central Government had decided to give seven percent interest of loan to farmers, the BJP-ruled State Government did not look upto it for two years and gave excuses,” Sonia Gandhi said at an election rally here.

She also appealed people to vote for the Congress for a strong and stable government.

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Congress president Sonia Gandhi today came down heavily on BJP leader Jaswant Singh’s claim that L K Advani was opposed to release of terrorists and accused the saffron party of speaking thousand lies to hide one lie.

“Jo politics main ho unhe logo ki ankho main dhul nahi jokhni chiye”, (those in politics should not make fool of people),” Gandhi said, referring to a newspaper report on former External Affairs Minster Jaswant Singh on Kandhar highjacking issue.

“Today morning, I read in a Delhi newspaper in which former foreign minister in NDA government (Jaswant Singh) made a statement. Previously, Advani had also made a statement in a television interview on the same issue. Both the versions are different, Gandhi said.

“Both were in the government and know what had happened. So, the question is not what happened or how it happened. The question is telling the people the truth,” she said.

“If there was a mistake, they (BJP) should have admitted it and assured that the mistake would not happen again. I can only remember a saying today: that is to hide one lie one has to speak thousand other lies. This is the condition of BJP,” the Congress President said.

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Attacking the BJP for L K Advani’s remarks that if voted to power his party will not abrogate the nuclear deal, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi today accused the saffron party of changing its stand on the issue.
“Now they (BJP) are saying that nuclear deal is acceptable to them. These same people did not allow Parliament to function for days and months on the same issue,” Sonia said addressing a public meeting here.

BJP’s prime ministerial candidate L K Advani had recently said in an interview that BJP, if voted to power, will not abrogate the nuclear deal as “we realise it’s not easy to do so”.

“After all, it’s an international agreement and one signed between two countries and their governments,” Advani had said.

On terrorism, Sonia said, “Those pointing fingers at us should introspect terrorist incidents that had happened during their rule. It was due to our policy that after the Mumbai terror attack, Pakistan has for the first time accepted that its soil was used for terrorism against us”.

Sonia also raised the issue of loan given for the Nano car project without naming either the Tatas or Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who had said that the Congress president must do her “homework” before coming to the state.

“The government here has given loan worth crores of rupees to industry and they have to repay it after 20 years. But they are ignoring farmers,” she said.