 "Smriti Irani says Rahul Gandhi's 'north-south' remark an 'insult' to Amethi")
Union Minister Smriti Irani launched a scathing attack on former Congress president Rahul Gandhi here on Saturday, accusing him of "insulting" the people of Amethi by comparing voters in north India with those in Kerala.
Irani, who laid the foundation stone for a bus stand in Tiloi here, said the people of the town gave Gandhi, the former Amethi MP, immense love for 15 years despite him "not doing anything for its development".
Irani wrested Amethi from Gandhi in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
"It is wrong for Rahul Gandhi to say that there is a lack of understanding among the people of Amethi as compared to those in Kerala. I believe that there is no lack of understanding among the people of Amethi. Rather, it is in Rahul Gandhi (who lacks understanding)," she said.
Gandhi has "insulted the people of Amethi in Kerala. He will not be forgiven", she added.
Gandhi, at a public gathering in Kerala's Thiruvananthapuram, had recently said, "For the first 15 years, I was an MP in the north, I had got used to a different type of politics. For me, coming to Kerala was very refreshing as suddenly I found that people are interested in issues, and not just superficially, but going into detail."
Without naming the Gandhi family, Irani said a political family of the country ruled Amethi for 30 years but never thought about its development.
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"Instead of developing Amethi and opening a medical college here, they continued to get their guest house constructed," she said.
Talking about farmers, Irani said in 2013, when the Congress was in power, only 800 farmers in Amethi got the benefit of the minimum support price while in 2020 23,800 farmers benefitted from it.
The Union minister said it is a matter of concern that there was not a single fertiliser rack centre in Amethi and claimed that farmers had to face lathis for fertilisers.
She said after the BJP came to power in Uttar Pradesh, a fertiliser rack centre came up in Amethi's Gauriganj and the construction work for a bypass and an overbridge was started.
Irani said the benefits of development schemes are directly reaching the common man.
The 'Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi' scheme has made farmers financially stronger and people have benefitted directly from Ayushman Bharat scheme, 'Ujjwala Yojana' and 'Saubhagya Yojana', she said.
Later, Irani also laid the foundation stone of a building to be constructed at a cost of Rs 7.50 crore in the junior high school campus of Nagar Panchayat, Amethi.
Without naming anyone, Irani accused the Gandhi family of getting the land for a medical college transferred in the name of a foundation and building a guest house on it.
A special family of the country, holding on to politics, acquired the land for the medical college in Amethi, she said.
Irani also praised the ruling BJP for working for Amethi's development.
With the support of the Modi government and the Yogi government, the BJP is completing development works in Amethi that had been pending for the last 30 years, she said.
A bus stop had not been constructed in Amethi in the last 30 years. Now Amethi is developing rapidly, she said.