Under Congress, poverty of its leaders was eradicated: Nitin Gadkari

Senior BJP leader Nitin Gadkari said on Wednesday that four generations of the Nehru-Gandhi family have promised to eradicate poverty without success. Only the poverty of Congress leaders was alleviated in the process, he quipped, addressing BJP workers in Mandrem Assembly constituency in Goa.

A by-election will be held in Mandrem on April 23. The Union minister said that Jawaharlal Nehru, the country's first prime minister, fought elections on the plank of poverty eradication.

"But people remained poor...Later Indira Gandhi fought the elections on the same issue but she too could do nothing," Gadkari said. Rajiv Gandhi as prime minister and Sonia Gandhi when she became Congress president repeated the same `Garibi Hatao' slogan, he said.

"In the current election, the great grandson of Nehru (Congress president Rahul Gandhi) is contesting on the same plank of Garibi Hatao (eradicate poverty)," he said. "Why is that the Congress, despite ruling the country, could not eradicate poverty?... (only) the poverty of Congress leaders has been eradicated," he quipped.

The Congress kept people poor due to its wrong economic policies and visionless and corrupt governance, he said. Gadkari also took a dig at Priyanka Gandhi, claiming that the Congress general secretary could drink the water of the Ganga because the river was cleaned up by the Narendra Modi government.

"And because we created an inland waterway from Allahabad to Varanasi, she could travel by boat," he said.