Jaipur, Sept 26: BJP President M Venkaiah Naidu today accused the congress of creating urban rural divide in development during its rule for more than four decades.
"Congress is solely responsible for the backwardness of village because it concentrated only on big cities neglecting balanced development," Naidu said at a public meeting in Durjania village, launching the party's "gaon chalo abhiyan" to gear up the party cadres for the upcoming assembly polls.
Congress developed a model in which urban areas got every thing - education, health or industry - but villages got just backwardness, he said adding the old party should be held responsible if development problems persisted in the villages.
"Who was responsible for the ills of the country: BJP which is ruling at the Centre for the last five years or the Congress which has ruled for 47 years? He posed to the huge village gathering. Vajpayee government, he said, had reversed the trend of concentration of development activities only in urban areas by introducing a host of schemes for clean drinking water, good connecting roads, inputs to farmers and employment generation in villages.

He accused the opposition of playing an irresponsible role by blocking Parliament proceedings and boycotting a minister.
He said Congress was getting weakened and it was evident from the fact that despite it expressing readiness to forge alliances no party is coming forward to join hands with it.

He claimed that BJP, under Vajpayee and with development as its poll plank, would stride to power in next year's general elections and five assembly polls this year.
Bureau Report