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LUCKNOW: The BSP has accused Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi of being a casteist. The party claimed that Rahul stayed at a house of a person belonging to Scheduled Caste (SC) in Marodgarhi village, Aligarh, but did not eat anything offered to him.

"Though Congress yuvraj had a night halt at the house of one person belonging to ’kanjar’ caste in Marodgarhi village of Aligarh on Thursday but he did not have food prepared there and it was ordered from outside for him while for his staff it was arranged at the house of the gram pradhan", a BSP spokesman said.

The accusation has come on the fourth day of Rahul Gandhi’s foot-march in UP. He is expected to cover villages in Mathura and Agra affected by land acquisition by the UP government for Yamuna Expressway and associated projects. The march, which Congress has named as Kisan Sandesh Yatra will culminate in a ’mahapanchayat’ at Aligarh on Saturday. The panchayat is expected to be attended by farmers from across western UP.

Rahul plans to take suggestions from the farmers over land acquisition and incorporate it in the land acquisition amendment bill which UPA government has promised to pass in the monsoon session of Parliament.

On Friday, Rahul urged Aligarh and Mathura villagers not to accept a single penny less than the market rate for their land acquired by the state government.He told villagers that "people in the city get market rate when they sell their land, whereas in villages land is being forcibly acquired by the state government at throwaway prices and sell 10 times high rate to private companies who again sell it 5 to 10 times higher rate." He also added that farmers should unite themselves and demand market price for their land from the state government.

At Devika village, he said that politicians should visit villages to find out ground realities. "While sitting in Delhi and Lucknow, we are unaware of the real problems and issues in the villages," he said. He added that he learned a lot through direct interaction with the villagers and though he had been a member of parliament for many years, he wasn’t aware of them before. He said that farmers also wanted development and were not against land acquisition if given adequate compensation and alternate source of livelihood. Rahul said that besides farmers, land acquisition also affected landless labourers and artisans in the village.

Earlier, the BSP had accused the centre of resorting to step-motherly treatment towards UP by not releasing financial aid on time. In the past four years, financial aid amounting to Rs 21,000 crore was never given on time to the state for development works. The Centre, it accused, "has also not accepted the demand for Rs 80,000 crore special economic package for the development of east UP and Bundelkhand."

The BSP lament against the centre came as a counter attack to Rahul Gandhi’s remark on Thursday that UP was being run by touts.