)
On the campaign trail in this city for the December 4 legislative assembly polls, Congress party Vice-President Rahul Gandhi focused on the “pragati” (development) in the 15-year rule of the Sheila Dikshit-led Congress government.
Unlike some of his recent poll speeches elsewhere, he kept his speech brief and refrained from any controversial remarks, stressing the progress in Delhi as in its Metro Rail, roads, education facilities and hospitals. Even opposition parties had to acknowledge these, he said.
He also used his first speech in the capital to distinguish the Congress led-UPA as a government that “empowers the aam aadmi” through a rights-based approach. The Congress, he said, was distinct from the others as one that “fights for the weak, the poor and the downtrodden”.
“We’ve built 130 flyovers in Delhi, a state-of-the-art-airport, revolutionised the transport infrastructure,” he claimed. And, that the Metro Rail was the subject of imitation in not only other states but even abroad.
Listing the laws on right to information, the right to work and the right to food as having empowered the “aam aadmi”, he said this was a party which “wants the voices of the most backward people reaching the Vidhan Sabhas and Parliament. We want to open the current political system for everybody... we want the aam aadmi to run the system”.
Unlike the combative approach of the opposition, he said, the Congress fights for the rights of the common man with compassion.
Hee refrained from mentioning, even in passing, the sensitive issue of price rise, which disappointed several in the audience. Spiralling costs of onions in the city had forced Chief Minister Dikshit a day earlier to try and strike an emotive chord with the public, saying she too had been forced to stop eating onions.
This was the first of a series of planned rallies by Gandhi in the Capital, aimed to keep focus wholly on the Congress governments here and at the Centre and their achievements. He exhorted the party cadre to spread the good work done among voters to get it a fourth term in Delhi.
