Mulayam bribing voters, says Congress

New Delhi, Oct 23: The Congress today launched an attack on the Mulayam Singh Government in Uttar Pradesh, saying that at a time when the State Government was complaining of lack of funds for welfare schemes, it was busy distributing largesse in a bid to woo voters, being scared of its non-performance.

On the one hand many development schemes in the States were gathering dust due to paucity of resources and on the other the State Government had devised a new method of distributing sarees to bribe the voters, after implementing unemployment allowance and Kanya Dhan schemes, Congress Spokesman Abhishek Singhvi told reporters here.

Mr Singhvi said the Uttar Pradesh Government would purchase sarees worth Rs two and a half crores with the condition that the sarees would be procured through middlemen from outside the state. However, the people of the State had seen through the game of Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Mr Singhvi said the Saree politics was not new to Uttar Pradesh. During the BJP regime, sarees were distributed to celebrate the birth day of a top BJP leader.

Though model code of conduct had not been enforced as yet prior to the local body elections in November, but this was clearly a violation of the spirit of code of conduct, Mr Singhvi said, adding this posed a question mark on the impartiality of the elections.

UNI