Congress general secretary and the party's star campaigner in Uttar Pradesh Rahul Gandhi made it loud and clear on Saturday that his party will not join hands with any "undesirable elements".
"We will not align with criminals and thieves at any cost," he told a well-attended election rally in Pindra, nearly 28 km from Varanasi.
He told the people, "I do not mind even if you give just two or four seats to the Congress in UP, but let me make it very clear that under no circumstances will we make any compromises."
"My last drop of blood and sweat will be dedicated to the larger interest of the people, for whom I will always be ready to do anything. But we have no room for goondas," he declared.
Trying to strike an emotional chord with the gathering, he added, "I may not be in a position to change the world but I can surely ensure respect for the people of Uttar Pradesh," evoking thunderous applause.
Lamenting the lack of basic amenities in UP, he said, "When I and my sister Priyanka were attending to our mother when she was hospitalised in US recently, we saw the kind of facilities that were available there. That set me thinking about the plight of the people of this state when they were faced with a similar situation."
He said, "I want to ensure that if someone went to a hospital in UP, he should get proper treatment. If a child went to a school, he should receive a good education and if an unemployed man looks for a job, he should be able to get it in his own state and should not have to go hundreds of miles in search of employment".
Rahul added, "But the tragedy is that leaders of various political parties who have ruled UP over the past 22 years never cared to look into these vital issues. Instead, they went about talking only of caste and religion, on which they thrived."
The Congress's star campaigner claimed, "When the Congress came to power at the Centre in 2004, we made only one promise -- to provide a government for the people and to lead the nation on the path to progress, which we have fulfilled".
In yet another bid to emotionally stir up the crowd, he added, "Behind the success of a nation lies the toil of its people. My contribution is not even a fraction of the labour that you people put in. After all, you are the ones who feed the entire nation."
Rahul's itinerary also included similar rallies at Sant Kabir Nagar and Siddharth Nagar in another part of eastern UP, where he echoed his usual rhetoric about large scale pilferage of funds given by the Centre for UP's development.
"Crores and crores of rupees were sent by the Centre towards various development programmes in the state, but the bulk of the money was eaten up by the elephant (poll symbol of the ruling Bahujan Samaj Party)," he quipped.
