NEW DELHI, OCT 10: Maninderjeet Singh Bitta, former president of the Indian Youth Congress and Health Minister of Punjab, and presently chairman of the All-India Anti-Terrorist Front, has said that the Congress under Sonia Gandhi had lost its way from the ideals set by Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. Speaking to The Indian Express Khariyan Khariyan _ a half-hour TV programme on Tara Punjabi, Bitta said that if Veerappan had abducted Rajkumar when Indira Gandhi was in charge, the Chief Minister of Karnataka would have had to resign.The programme, which has one-to-one interviews, is scheduled for telecast on Thursday at 9.00 pm on Tara Punjabi.Firebrand Bitta also said that the Congress which used P.V. Narasimha Rao to gain power in 1991, had happily made him a scapegoat in the present JMM case. ``If Rao was such an expert on manipulations, he would not have been convicted like this,'' Bitta said.When asked whether he planned to visit Kashmir to root out terrorism from the state, especially as chairman of the All-India Anti-Terrorist Front, Bitta said that as long as Farooq Abdullah was Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, his life was not safe in Kashmir. In fact, he even said that the J-K government was more hand in glove with the terrorists and till such time that Abdullah's government was in power in the state.Bitta himself said that he was not interested in any post in the Congress as chamchagiri (flattery) was not his style.
