HYDERABAD, 28 April — The main opposition Congress party President Sonia Gandhi yesterday accused the central coalition of trying to shield Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi despite the public outcry over the sectarian violence in the western state.

She was addressing a public meeting in this backward town, about 500 km south of state capital Hyderabad, where she distributed 2.5 million rupees among the families of 90 farmers who had committed suicide following crop failure caused by drought.

The state unit of the party had collected the money through public donations.

Braving the blazing sun, about 100,000 people gathered to hear Sonia, who blasted the ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP) for “ignoring the plight of farmers” and allegedly undermining the grass-root administration system through its Janmabhoomi program.

Police had a tough time controlling the crowd, which broke the barricades to catch a glimpse of the Congress leader.

Sonia, who flew in a helicopter from Bangalore, met the bereaved families who broke down while narrating their plight.

In her 15-minute speech in Hindi, Sonia launched a blistering attack against Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, accusing him of playing “power politics” and doing nothing to prevent atrocities against the weaker sections and women. She said that the TDP government in Andhra Pradesh and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in New Delhi had failed to respond to people’s aspirations.

She especially blamed the hike in power tariff in the southern state and pointed out that dozens of weavers too had killed themselves under mounting debts.

Sonia also took on Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s Hindu extremist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for failing to contain the sectarian violence in Gujarat since February-end leading to the loss of over 900 lives.

She said: “The land of Mahatma Gandhi is in the grip of a communal conflagration for the last two months. It is causing concern to the entire nation. We cannot afford to lower our image in our own eyes.”

Alluding to the bid by the BJP and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) to form the government in Uttar Pradesh, she said: “The same set of people had lectured on political morality before the elections. Morality should be reflected in actions and not merely in words.”