Akali Dal slams Rahul Gandhi for comment on poor

The Shiromani Akali Dal Tuesday lashed out at Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi for saying that the mindset of the poor was responsible for their plight.

In a statement issued here, Akali Dal president and Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal said the statement itself was a reflection of the mindset of Rahul Gandhi "who was yet to understand India and its people".

Badal said the under privileged section of society also had aspirations and wanted to progress in life. He said it was surprising that Rahul Gandhi did not understand this sentiment and was not aware that it was the Gandhi family which had trapped the nation in a vicious circle of poverty, corruption and economic uncertainty.

Attacking the Nehru-Gandhi family for "looting the natural resources and hard earned money of tax payers through various scams", Badal described the Gandhi family as the fountainhead of all scams and said the country was still facing poverty because of corrupt practices followed by the Congress since Independence.

"This family has perfected the art of looting the nation's treasury right from the Nehru era, pushing scam money to foreign banks and then getting a clean chit through a Congress Bureau of Investigation (CBI)," Badal said.

Citing examples, Badal said the Mundra and Jeep purchase scam during Nehru's era were pushed under the carpet by the CBI and in the Bofors scam, the Gandhi family secured a clean chit from the CBI. He said that even the 2G spectrum telecom scam and coal scam was also handed over to the CBI to save the skin of Gandhi family.

He said it was the need of hour to expose the complicity of the Gandhi family in all these scams.