Sonia gives 50 road projects to Rae Bareli

December 3, 2013

LUCKNOW: Exactly a week after Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi inaugurated key railway projects in Sonia Gandhi’s constituency, the party president added more than 50 road projects, bank branches, one FM station and a rail project between Rae Bareli and Akbarpur, to the district’s already burgeoning gifts kitty.

Gandhi, who landed at Fursatganj airport on Monday morning, laid the foundation stone for more than 50 road projects under the Centrally-funded Pradhan Mantri Gramin Sadak Yojana as part of the UPA-II’s rural road connectivity endeavour. Sonia also inaugurated a water treatment plant supplying potable water to 110 villages, FM Rainbow, available at a frequency of 102.8 mhz, to inform and entertain people, and 13 new branches of United Bank of India in Harchandpur block.

Though the bounty, worth several crores also includes the Rae Bareli-Maharajganj-Akbarganj railway line, connecting Rae Bareli to Faizabad through the shortest railway route, the Congress did not seem to have deemed it fit to invite Faizabad MP and UPCC chief Nirmal Khatri.

During the day-long visit, Gandhi did not address a public meeting; she did, however, interact with people of the constituency at some places. A day before her arrival, farmers blocked the Lalganj-Unnao railway track and demanded jobs for their family members at the Rail Coach factory in Lalganj, as promised by Sonia during her earlier visits. The jobs, were to be in exchange of land for the factory, dubbed as Sonia’s dream project.

The farmers claimed that of about 1,340 families, who gave their land for the project, no job has been given to 128 families. Similar protests have been staged before Sonia’s previous visits to the constituency too. Back then, officials of the railway ministry and representatives from Sonia’s office met and took their applications. No discussions in this regard, though, were held on Monday.

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