Rahul Gandhi’s tour of the Bundelkhand region, followed by his first, on street  protest has caused a standoff between BSP and Congress. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati on asked Rahul to stop his ‘political drama’. She also threatened that such actions can lead to BSP withdrawing its support from UPA.

The whole incident started when Rahul was stopped by the police from proceeding to the divisional commissioners office. Rahul wanted to submit a memo regarding farmers issues and also about the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. The police stopped him from entering the office complex as he was accompanied by a mob.  He was however allowed to meet the commissioner later.

Over the last few couple of weeks Rahul Gandhi has been on a tour of the drought-hit Bundelkhand area. In the past week alone, Rahul happened to visit several villages in Chitrakoot, Mahoba and Jhansi to see how the development under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) was going on. He visited a number of dalit families in the area. These actions did not go well with Chief minister Mayawati who was afraid of her votebank getting eroded. Now Mayawati went upto the extent of threatening the withdrawal of support to the UPA coalition. She shot back at Congress on the issue of inflation. She also reiterated the need of a special package for UP. Mayawati claimed the main goal of Congress party’s “publicity stunt” in Bundelkhand was to divert people’s attention from its shameful loss in recent byelections. She hinted that Rahul should instead use his influence to get Rs 80,000 crore sanctioned for the state of Uttar Pradesh