Dehradun:
As a battered Uttarakhand struggles to stand on its feet after a month-long upheaval, the BJP and the Congress are still squabbling. Now, over boxes of relief material that have landed in the flood-ravaged hill state from Gujarat.
Local BJP leaders say these boxes are "Modi kits" sent by Gujarat Chief Minister
Narendra Modi for victims of the calamity. They allege that Congressmen are now claiming that the boxes are sponsored by the Congress-ruled state government.
"The Congress claims that kits sent by Modi
ji are theirs," said an indignant Teerath Singh Rawat, President of Uttarakhand BJP.
Each of these 31,416 cartons contains a month's ration, a stove, a pressure cooker and new clothing for a family.
Congress spokesman Dhirendra Pratap has rebutted the BJP's allegations and said "they should be ashamed."
The Youth Congress had earlier distributed boxes that they did not call "Rahul kits", but which had a photograph of Rahul Gandhi on them. These cartons were packed only with food.
As the country's soldiers braved tough terrain and bad weather to rescue over a lakh people from Uttarakhand over the last month, the Congress and BJP have kept up a constant litany of charges against each other.
Last month, a media report that Narendra Modi made a flying visit to Uttarakhand and rescued 15,000 people from his state saw Congress leaders descend en masse to attack him. The BJP retaliated by questioning the absence of the Congress number 2 Rahul Gandhi in the first few days after tragedy struck Gujarat.