The Congress in planning a major agitation in Amethi over human resources development minister Smriti Irani’s decision to close the IIIT campus in Amethi.
The Congress in planning a major agitation in Amethi over human resources development minister Smriti Irani’s decision to close the IIIT campus in Amethi.
Ms Irani had recently announced the closure of IIIT campus and had said that a satellite campus of Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University (BBAU) would be set up instead.
Congressmen in Amethi now see a definite design in the Modi government’s decisions to take away major projects from the constituency of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and malign his image.
What apparently seems to have added fuel to the fire in the Congress is the statement made by UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, in which he claimed that a senior BJP leader had asked him to shift Nift from Rae Bareli, saying that it “does not look nice there”.
Mr Yadav was launching a scheme to boost khadi with the help of Nift when he made this disclosure.
“Does anyone need more proof about the BJP’s intentions on Amethi and Rae Bareli We are not going to take this lying down and will build up an agitation soon,” said senior Congress leader Siraj Mehndi.
Dr Mohammed Muslim, the Congress MLA from Tiloi, which is a part of Amethi parliamentary constituency, said, “We have no objection to the opening of a satellite campus of BBAU but we will not allow IIIT to be taken away. There is ample land in Amethi for both projects to co-exist and if the Centre insists on taking away IIIT, we will not only launch an agitation, but may even move court against the decision.”
Amethi’s district Congress committee president Yogendra Misra said that the party would launch its agitation from June.
“First of all, the Shaktimaan Food Park project was cancelled, then the Hindustan Paper Mill, Sainik School, Central School Discovery Park proposed at IIIT and some subsidiary railway projects that were earmarked for Amethi have been taken away. All this cannot be a coincidence and there is a definite political design in it. We will not allow the Centre to play havoc with the aspirations of the people of Amethi,” he said.
Congress MLA Akhilesh Pratap Singh also alleged that the BJP was trying to discredit Mr Rahul Gandhi by taking away projects from Amethi. “The people are now politically aware and understand why all this is being done. Ms Smriti Irani claims to be working for the people of Amethi but she is doing more harm to the local people because of her political vendetta,” he said.
UP BJP spokesman Vijay Bahadur Pathak, however, rubbished the allegations and said that the Congress was trying to cover up its own inadequacies by blaming the BJP.
