Congress President Rahul Gandhi (File| PTI)
NEW DELHI: Team Rahul quickly chipped in after the Congress started a crowd-funding campaign to help Odisha youngster Muktikant Biswal realise his dream of a super speciality hospital in the poll-bound state. Muktikant, 30, had recently walked 1350 miles to reach Delhi and remind PM Modi of his April 1, 2015 promise of building a super speciality hospital in Odisha's Rourkela.
On Saturday, Rahul had tweeted to take a dig at the PM over the issue and had launched the fundraiser.
"The Congress party has begun a fund raise to shame the PM into keeping the promise he made. Please contribute generously," Rahul had said.
The tweet invited a quick rebuttal from union minister Dharmednra Pradhan who said that Rs 200 crore had been sanctioned for the project and a DPR was ready, promoting state Congress chief Niranjan Patnaik to point out the amount was inadequate.
"Look who is talking about Odisha. Thank you Sir for taking out your precious time from your busy foreign tours & talking about Odisha. But we have a question, PM promised a super speciality hospital in 2015, nothing has been done till now, what will you do in 10 months," Patnaik, who chipped in with Rs 11,000 asked Pradhan.
Congress social media in charge Divya Sapandana took the lead in contributing and tagged young turks like Milind Deora and Sachin Pilot, who gave monetary help and further appealed to party collegaues Jitin Prasada and Gaurav Gogoi and even RLD leader Jayant Chaudhary to follow suit.
Sources said by Sunday evening around Rs 2.6 lakh of targeted Rs 20 lakh had been collected towards the cause with help from around 160 supporters, adding that they hoped for the best in the remaining four days during which the fundraiser would remain open.
