Elections Level 2: Money talks, democracy walks

By Sobha Naidu

With the first round of balloting accounting for 124 of the 543 seats over, the shrill campaign rhetoric, that had even turned personal, subsided considerably Friday with the attention shifting to spending of government funds and spiriting away of black money abroad.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi asked the people of Uttar Pradesh to find what the state government had done with central funds. Her son and party general secretary Rahul Gandhi did the same in Karnataka, while Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader LK Advani promised to get back all the black money stashed abroad, a major campaign plank of the party.

Speaking in Domariaganj, Uttar Pradesh, Sonia Gandhi said: "The state government (run by the Bahujan Samaj Party of Mayawati) is not using properly the funds being released by the central government. So, you must ask the state government where it has spent the central funds meant for carrying out developmental schemes in the state...

"If you give our party a second term, we would be in a position to take our development schemes on a larger scale to help people across the country."

Echoing his mother in Gulbarga, north Karnataka, a state run by the BJP, Rahul Gandhi said, "Thousands of crores of rupees have been given to Karnataka by the central government but the money has not reached the intended beneficiaries.

"Yesterday (Thursday) I was in Andhra Pradesh (which borders Karnataka). There is a Congress government and central funds have been properly utilised." While in Andhra Pradesh, Rahul Gandhi prayed at the famous Lord Venkateshwara temple at Tirupati at midnight.

Having addressed over 40 campaign rallies so far, Rahul Gandhi is gradually emerging as one of the principal campaigners for the Congress. His scheduled visit to Madhya Pradesh's Maoist-affected Balaghat district had to be called off after an intelligence warning that his life could be in danger, said party sources.