Maya's U-turn, returns Rae Bareli land for rail coach factory

Rediff NEWS

October 18, 2008 20:32 IST

Making a U-turn, the Mayawati government in Uttar Pradesh on Saturday decided to return the land in Rae Bareli for construction of a rail coach factory, an issue on which she had a high-pitched spat with Congress President Sonia Gandhi during the week.

"The Cabinet has decided to give 189.25 hectares of land, which was with the state government, to the Centre for the Rail Coach Factory.

"This was done so that they don't blame us later and the dirty political game Congress is playing over this land, gets buried in this land in Rae Bareli," she told a press conference on Saturday.

Last Saturday, the state government had cancelled the allotment of the land for the coach factory for which Gandhi and Railway Minister Lalu Prasad had planned to go to Rae Bareli on Tuesday and lay the foundation stone.

While the function was cancelled, Gandhi went to Lalganj, where the factory is to be located in her parliamentary constituency Rae Bareli, and charged the Mayawati government with putting hurdles in development programmes.

She made the visit defying prohibitory orders and declared she was ready to go to jail for the sake of development.

The next day, Mayawati hit back at Gandhi saying she made a drama of going to jail without any reason and accused the Congress of placing roadblocks in development.