UP suffered due to misrule of non-Cong govts: PM

Pooranpur (Pilibhit), Apr 15: Making a strong case for the development of Uttar Pradesh, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said golden status of the state had been lost due to 'vested interests' of the non-Congress governments during the last fifteen years.

''UP has seen the recent governments run by those who either worked for themselves or for their families-- the common man being the casualty in the process,'' Dr Singh said while addressing his first election rally during UP assembly polls here this afternoon.

He said Uttar Pradesh had been a high ranking state at the time of independence and the various Congress governments strived hard to maintain it but during the last one and a half decade, the non-Congress governments had made a mess of it.

He asserted that only those states managed to make progress which were ruled by the Congress. ''Haryana is one such state which was much below UP in the overall ranking earlier but the Congress governments ensured the state became one of the most developed states in the country, lagging UP far behind,'' he pointed out.

UNI