Amethi (Uttar Pradesh), Apr. 21 : Priyanka Vadra, the daughter of UPA chairperson and Congress president Sonia Gandhi, has said that the Left needs to have a rethink on some of its regressive and anti-development policies if it is desirous of taking Indian forward in the new millenium.

Speaking in an interview to Times Now, Priyanka said: "The need of the hour for our country is to go forward into the modern era, where development is a need and the economy must be strong for this. So any ideology that holds it back, is regressive in that sense. I think it needs a little bit of a rethink."

Asked what would her reaction be if the numbers came out after the elections in such a way that there would be a need to take on the Left as a coalition partner again, she said: "Well, ideally one should stick to their principles. But as I said, coalition politics is a reality. So one cannot tell the future. As I said before, ultimately to be able to change things, to be able to move forward, power is required. Because if you don''t have power you cannot do a lot of things that you would like to do for the nation. Therefore every political party ultimately does aspire to be in power and compromises are made. If those compromises have to be made preferrably it should not be in your ideology. In the sense, Congress is a secular party and that is its main stay. So as long as the compromise is not on that smaller compromises perhaps may have to be made.

When asked whether the pro-LTTE statements coming out of Tamil Nadu have hurt her family, Priyanka said: "I would speak for all my family members when I said that politics is quiet separate to us from a personal grief. I think that none of us have any hatred or anger towards those who killed my father. So, if somebody says things about them or praises them, it does not cause us personal grief."

When asked whether on meeting Nandita, one of the accused in the 1991 assassination of her father had given her a sense of closure about the whole issue, she said: "This is a very personal thing. But, I really have never understood this word closure. Because when you lose somebody you really love, there is never any closure."

She also said that she learnt a lot from her meeting with Nandita.

Priyanka said that she was clear on what the people wanted and admitted that the divide between rural and urban India was quite wide. Therefore, she could not understand how political parties or politicians leading them could talk about issues that really did not matter.

"I am talking about the people in the villages and ordinary people, who have really tough difficult lives. We can''t even compare city life with what I see here. They are very clear of what they want. They want development and they want to move forward. Their demands are based on these things. So when political parties bring up things which actually are of no concern to the real issues of the election, I find it incongruent because I don''t understand, how politicians cannot understand that what they are saying is of no interest to the people."

She also claimed that people were beyond the issue of the Babri Masjid demolition.

"I think the people of India are very wise. Perhaps there are some sections which might get charged up. But people are very wise. They know when they are being used politically. They know when their religion is being used for politics. They know when their caste is being used for politics," Priyanka told the news channel. (ANI)