"Non-Congress parties have pushed U.P. to brink"

Describing the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Samajwadi Party as the two sides of the same coin, Congress president Sonia Gandhi said that in the last 19 years Uttar Pradesh had witnessed deterioration ever since the non-Congress parties came to power in the State.

The non-Congress parties thrived on caste and communal agenda, using these as a vote-catching device, and were also guilty of opportunism and misleading and dividing society, she said.

Addressing a public meeting at Phoolbagh here after the conclusion of the two-day Pradesh Congress Committee convention, Ms. Gandhi attributed the development and progress of the State to her party. People's problems multiplied under the other regimes, which ignored the plight of the common man.

-The Hindu