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Congress “suicidal”, BJP “rudderless”
India Blooms News Service
New Delhi, Oct 1 (IBNS): India’s main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday called on members to “put its house in order” and pad up to cast an alternate government, declaring the Congress-led ruling coalition government was “suicidal”.
Speaking on the second and final day of the BJP’s National Executive meet here, Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj said that the amid the growing resentment against the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, the party had to prove its worth.
Elections cannot be won just because the UPA is in disarray, she told the party workers and leaders. “We need to ask ourselves whether we are ready for early polls,” she reportedly told party cadres, asserting that there was a possibility of polls before 2014.
“This government will not last long, and being the principal opposition party, it is our responsibly to be ready for this challenge,” Swaraj told the gathering, Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley said.
"We must learn from Congress' mistakes and maintain a clean image and unity in the party, keeping allies together. This is how we will fulfil our duty as an opposition and also be prepared for an alternate government,” she said.
Speaking to the media, Jaitley drove home Swaraj’s point. “A revulsion towards the government has set in...the government won't last till 2014...The Prime Minister always had loss of authority. Now he suffers from loss of confidence in dealing with the situation.”
A recent spree of corruption scandals, compounded with rising prices and slowing economic growth, have seriously dented the popularity of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government, political analysts have said.
Scams within Singh’s government, including the infamous 2G spectrum scandal that was allegedly masterminded by his former telecoms minister, have rocked the credibility of the UPA’s second term that began in 2009.
Speaking at the BJP’s meeting on Saturday, party veteran L K Advani, underscored this, echoing Swaraj and Jaitley. “The government is in a suicidal mode. We don't need to disturb it,” the senior leader, who last week bowed out of the running for again Prime Minister in 2014, said.
The two day meeting, a display of strength and unity of sorts intended to galvanise members and supporters of the right wing Hindu nationalist party, however, was somewhat debased by the absence of some of its top regional stalwarts.
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, touted to be one of front-runners for BJP’s 2014 campaign, and two of the party's two discredited chief ministers were called down following graft allegations -- B S Yeddyurappa of Karnataka and Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishak of Uttarakhand, were conspicuous in their absence.
The BJP, which is India’s second largest political party, has long been grappling with purported rifts within its own administration. Reports of differences between Swaraj and Jaitley, as among other senior leaders, have frequently caught media attention.
Responding to the BJP’s offensive on Saturday, Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi, appeared to stress on this perceived impairment of their opposition, as he said that the party was delusional.
“Most of the statements and activities at the national executive meet of the BJP reflect that collective premature dreams of a rudderless ship which has convinced itself that it is an active contender to power,” Singhvi said, dubbing the BJP’s tack as “Goebbelsian tactics”.
“These are nothing but the illusions of grandeur and sooner they come out of it the better. There is no affirmative support for them from the public so they are now trying to mislead the nation... But if the BJP repeats a lie thousand times, it can't become a truth,” he added.
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