Land bill: Sonia Gandhi may team up with Anna Hazare to take on Centre

NEW DELHI: Congress is likely to organize a farmers' rally in the capital in the coming days, in what appears an attempt to ratchet up the mobilization against the land acquisition bill while seeking to strengthen the perception that the Centre is “anti-farmer“. Party president Sonia Gandhi's pro-farmer actions have even made possible the unthinkable -of Congress joining hands with UPA bugbear Anna Hazare.

Sonia on Tuesday told Hazare that Congress was committed to opposing the land acquisition bill on all fora.

A day after Sonia led a march of 14 political parties to Rashtrapati Bhavan, sources said she would preside over a rally of farmers in the capital.While the date hasn't been fixed yet, it is likely to be before the first week of April when the harvest season starts.

As part of activism on the farmer front, Sonia will tour Jhalawar and Kota in Rajasthan on Friday to take stock of damage to crops by unseasonal rains and hailstorm.Sources said she will follow it up a day later with a trip to Bhiwani in Haryana.

The idea behind the farmers' rally is to add impetus to the campaign that farmers were being shortchanged and corporates benefited by the BJP government. Congress has devised the slogan “kisan virodhi-Narendra Modi“ (Narendra Modi is anti-farmer).The party will also highlight the Centre's failure to substantially hike the minimum support price for crops and to help clear cane arrears of growers.

Haryana land for Rajiv trust under lens

Even as Congress chief Sonia Gandhi leads the opposition's charge against the Modi government, the Haryana assembly on Wednesday revived a 2009 controversy over land allotted to the Rajiv Gandhi Charitable Trust in Gurgaon.

The Manohar Lal Khattar government told the House that the circumstances under which about five acres in Ullawas village of Gurgaon were allotted to the trust linked to Sonia's family would be probed.

The trust was supposed to build an eye hospital on the land by 2014. But last February, the then Congress government gave it time till January 2017. Now the government is saying it would not object if the villagers want the land back.