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Is Sonia Gandhi monitoring Maneka Gandhi’s office?

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Kaushik Deka
Kaushik DekaAug 04, 2015 | 12:08

Is Sonia Gandhi monitoring Maneka Gandhi’s office?

Around 9.30am on August 3, while addressing the Congress parliamentary party’s (CPP) general body meeting, the Congress president Sonia Gandhi launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In an earlier speech at a CPP meeting on May 6, she was equally severe on the prime minister. The basic line of her attack has remained the same — the prime minister makes tall promises but delivers little, he has failed to maintain the dignity of the PM’s chair and the BJP government is pro-corporate and anti-poor.

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But a finer scrutiny of both her speeches reveals that she seems to be closely following the ministry run by her sister-in-law Maneka Gandhi. On both occasions, she quoted examples from the ministry of women and child development to tear apart the Modi government.

On May 6, she criticised the prime minister, for reducing the budget of the ministry by 50 per cent. "And all this by a prime minister who has launched Beti Bachao Beti Padhao," she had said. This time, she dared the government to publish a research report kept at the office of her sister-in-law. "Between November 2013 and May 2014, the women and child development ministry and the UNICEF together did a survey on children's health. The survey was suppressed. Why? First, because it was reported that during the term of this government, there is a high degree of prevalence of malnutrition in children. And it has been reported that children's nutrition and health indicators of Gujarat are far behind the national average. So now we have to ask whether the Modi Model, which transmits benefits to only a few people, works," is what she said in her speech on August 3.

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Her reference to Maneka Gandhi’s office on both occasions could just be a coincidence. Or is it a deliberate strategy? We may have to wait for her next speech.

Another significant pattern noticed in her address to the CPP was the growing concern for the Northeast. In her May speech, she attacked Modi for imposing the AFPSA in Arunachal Pradesh and hurting Assam’s interest in the land swap agreement with Bangladesh. This time, the Congress president shed tears over the BJP government’s decision to remove the special category status given to the Northeastern states.

It’s not hard to decipher the cause behind this concern. Of the nine Congress-ruled states in the country, five are from the Northeast. What’s hard to understand is why the AFPSA was not repealed when the UPA was in power and even the then home minister P Chidambaram was in favour of repealing the draconian act. What’s even more puzzling is that the seven states have remained disturbed and underdeveloped even though they have mostly voted the Congress to power.

Last updated: August 04, 2015 | 12:25
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