2009 Poll Prospects And Alignments

[acharya]

<b> BJP “charge sheet” against UPA</b>

Special Correspondent

Says it is time for the government to go

NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday released a 118-page booklet charging the United Progressive Alliance government with reneging on its poll promises made to the people through its manifesto and deviating from the agreed Common Minimum Programme.

It was time for the government to go and time for the people to get an opportunity to vote, the party said in the booklet released here by its spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy.

The BJP’s “charge sheet” was released soon after it became known that the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was preparing such “charge sheet.”

The BJP listed the charges as follows:

The UPA government has failed to check terrorism thus worsening the internal security scenario, “appeasing the minorities” and “insulting the majority community,” hurting the common man by allowing prices to rise, betraying farmers as the debt relief had left untouched those who had borrowed from private money-lenders, allowing China to aggressively maintain pressure on India by downplaying Chinese snubs and incursions into Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim, messing up the Kashmir scene by “surrendering to Muslim fundamentalists” on the land-for-Amarnath Shrine Board issue and, finally allowing the Prime Minister’s Office to become “irrelevant.”

Mr. Rudy sidestepped a question on how he could describe the Prime Minister’s Office as “irrelevant” when in fact it was the Prime Minister, who pushed the India-U.S. nuclear deal agenda leading to a realignment of political forces.
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The BJP spokesperson spoke derisively of Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh’s own “1 2 3 agreement with the Congress party.” He alleged that the SP wanted the Congress to withdraw cases against its leaders, it wanted the ouster of the Finance Minister and the Petroleum Minister from the Cabinet, and it wanted to get the Centre’s help to “crush” its political opponents in Uttar Pradesh.</b>

Asked about an agreement that senior BJP leader Jaswant Singh wanted to broker with Mr. Amar Singh in the run-up to the presidential contest in June-July 2007, Mr. Rudy said: “The BJP’s tentative offer of prime ministership to the United National Progressive Alliance was dependent on the Alliance committing its vote in favour of [the then vice-president] Bhairon Singh Shekhawat [contesting for the President’s office against UPA candidate Pratibha Patil].”