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Sonia takes on Maya, reaches Rae Bareli


NEW DELHI: Unfazed by the UP government's apparent attempts to foil her plans for holding a rally on Tuesday by imposing prohibitory orders, Congress
president Sonia Gandhi flew to Fursatganj in a private aircraft skipping Lucknow

Sonia slammed Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati for trying to stop her from entering Rae Bareli and for halting development at the cost of politics. Sonia said she was ready to go to jail for the sake of development. "Rae Bareli and Amethi were the karma bhoomi of Feroze Gandhi, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. It is also the karma bhoomi of mine and Rahul. Rae Bareli and Amethi are like my home. I want to ask, can anyone prevent me from coming to my home? No one can," she said in a brief interaction with reporters near the railway station in Lalganj. She also had barbs at chief minister Mayawati saying that like the Rail Coach Factory in her constituency for which land allotment has been cancelled by the state government, there were at least eight such schemes on which clearance has come from the Centre but "all the hurdles are here only in Uttar Pradesh". Sonia was cheered by slogan-shouting Congress workers who garlanded her. She said she had planned to come here for the happy occasion of laying the foundation stone for the Rail Coach Factory. "You know the matter is now before the court and I will not make any comments," she said when asked about the cancellation of the land allotment by the Mayawati government. Meanwhile, the district was virtually turned into a fortress with the deployment of heavy security for Sonia's visit to her parliamentary constituency in the backdrop of a land row between the Centre and the Mayawati government. On Monday, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court directed the state and the Centre to maintain the status quo on the land allotted to the Railways for setting up of a rail coach factory in Rae Bareli. The Mayawati government had on Sunday cancelled the allotment of 189.25 hectares of land given to the railways

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