The Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday said the need of the hour is to reach out to people, especially the youth in Kashmir Valley and viewed that the “cycle of violence and tragic killings” could end through dialogue and mutual understanding.
Mrs Gandhi made it clear the party positions on key issues like situation in the Valley, illegal mining, Bhopal gas tragedy and Bihar Assembly polls during her address to the CPP general body meeting here on Thursday morning.
However, two controversial issues — salary, allowances and pensions of MPs and the release of former Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson — did not figure in her address at the Central Hall of Parliament .
A section of the Congress was expecting the party chief to give some hints on MP salary and allowances in the wake of her reported comments made at a Congress’ parliamentary affairs committee meeting here recently. She was said to have said in a lighter vein: “When my husband was a pilot, his salary was higher than that my mother-in-law, who was the country’s PM.”
But well-placed sources in the party and the government said her comment was “distorted”.
Describing the upsurge and violence in the valley in recent weeks as a “call to our collective conscience”, Mrs Gandhi underlined that Jammu and Kashmir has a “special place in our polity and indeed in our hearts.”
“A whole generation has grown up under the shadow of brutality and conflict. The anger and pain that is manifesting itself, especially among the young, needs to be addressed. Dialogue and mutual understanding are the key to ending the cycle of violence and tragic killings. Our security forces have a difficult task to discharge,” she said.
On Bhopal gas tragedy she said “not a single victim should be denied justice. Equally important is the necessity to put systems in place that will ensure that no Bhopal-type man-made catastrophe repeats itself.”
“On the Bhopal gas tragedy, I am the first to acknowledge that there have been inadequacies in how successive governments have dealt with this calamity. But we cannot remain prisoners of the past. We must look ahead and answer the question — what can we do now? Rather than what could we have done in the past?” she said.
The GoM has prepared a detailed agenda for action. “Compensation has been increased, medical facilities are being strengthened, judicial decisions are being reopened,” she pointed out.
On the illegal mining, Mrs Gandhi said “this has emerged as a most serious menace in a number of states with profound political, economic and social implications. What is most worrying is the high degree of convergence between areas that are mineral and forest-rich and areas that are the arenas of tribal deprivation and for Left-wing extremist violence,” she said,
And on the coming polls in Bihar, Mrs Gandhi said, “Our party is galvanised to fight the battle ahead. Ours is the only party to have an all inclusive development agenda.”
Bihar, she said, had never received so much of financial assistance from the Centre for development and welfare programmes. “This is the essential message that we need to communicate to the people of Bihar. In many states, including Bihar, schemes and programmes funded by the Central government are appropriated by the state governments which then claim credit that justifiably belongs to the Centre,” she said.
She asked the party workers to actively engage themselves in making people aware of these false claims and projecting the tangible accomplishments of the central government.