Don’t want buses? Will take them back: Priyanka to UP govt

LUCKNOW/NEW DELHI: Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said on Wednesday that the party would summon back the hundreds of buses it had sent to Uttar Pradesh’s borders to carry stranded migrant workers home after a confrontation with the state government, which refused to accept the vehicles .

“If you don’t want to use them, it doesn’t matter. We will send them back,” Priyanka Gandhi said in a message posted on social media after repeated appeals to allow the buses, parked on UP’s borders with Delhi and Rajasthan, failed to move the Yogi Adityanath government. “It doesn’t matter whether these are our buses or yours. We only wanted to help to serve the people,” she said in the 10-minute message.

Uttar Pradesh deputy chief minister Dinesh Sharma said a list of buses sent to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state government by the Congress was fake and alleged that many were unfit for use as public transport.

“It’s fake, 460 on the list do not have requisite fitness. How can we deploy them? The state government cannot play with the lives of migrant labourers by using unfit buses,” Sharma said.

Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi said , “... How is it that you will not allow to ferry migrant workers of UP and Bihar? This is the cheapest form of politics. ” Late in the evening, the buses were turned back from the border.