Lucknow, April 16: A war of words broke out between the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Amethi on Monday as local MP and Congress President Rahul Gandhi arrived here on a two-day visit to his parliamentary constituency.
Local Congress leaders alleged that Rahul Gandhi was prevented by the district administration of Amethi from inaugurating a five-km road in his constituency, for which he had laid the foundation stone on January 16 this year.
But the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said the road was being built under the Prime Minister road construction scheme and hence, senior party leader and Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani would be throwing it open during her next visit to Amethi.
Clarifying the issue, District Magistrate Shakuntala Gautam said the road was still incomplete and if the MP wanted, he could certainly go and see it and review its construction.
The Rs 3.30-crore road is to link Kotwa village with Thori village here.
Irani had unsuccessfully contested the 2014 Lok Sabha election against the Gandhi scion and has been grooming the constituency for her next political outing in the 2019 general elections.
While Congressmen were quite worked up after the news spread, senior district Congress leader Yogendra Mishra said the BJP was trying to slight the Congress President by spreading such rumours. Gandhi had merely gone there to review the ongoing work, he added.
But, his statement contradicted the programme of the Congress chief, released beforehand by his representative Chandrakant Dubey, in which the inauguration of the road was mentioned.
District BJP chief Uma Shanker Pandey alleged that even though the road was built under a scheme of the Prime Minister and not the Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) fund, Rahul Gandhi was trying to take credit for it and hence, he raised the objection.
He, however, added that when the road would be inaugurated by Smriti Irani, Gandhi would also be invited as the local MP.
Earlier, the Congress President was received at Lucknow airport by senior party functionaries. He was greeted by a sloganeering crowd of party workers who sought his intervention alleging that the party had been sold out by middlemen.
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UP: Three killed, one injured in road accident in Kannauj
Kannauj (UP), Mar 11 (PTI): Three people were killed and one person was injured in an accident involving a tractor trolley and two motorcycles on the national highway here, police said on Wednesday.
The incident took place on National Highway 24 near Atara village at around 11 pm on Tuesday.
According to Sadar Kotwali Station House Officer Jitendra Pratap Singh, a farmer from Mawai village was returning home on a tractor-trolley when it collided with a motorcycle near Atara village in Jalalpur Panwara area.
The impact of the collision was so severe that it threw the two riders onto the road, killing them on the spot. The deceased have been identified as Mohammad Ahad (20) and Arbaaz (16), both residents of Inayatpur village.
A man identified as Raju, a resident of Mawai village, was also injured in the accident and was admitted to the district hospital.
After the collision, the tractor driver lost control of the vehicle, which overturned onto another motorcycle, killing its rider Amit (36), a resident of Chhibramau, on the spot.
The bodies have been sent for post-mortem, police said.
