BJP Future - 6

[acharya]

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“Congress scared of losing vote-bank”</b>

Special correspondent

BANGALORE: The Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate, L.K. Advani, on Sunday said fighting terror would be high on the agenda of his government if the party was voted to power.

He was speaking to party delegates on the third and closing day of the BJP national executive committee meeting here.

Paying homage to those killed in Saturday’s attacks in Delhi and the thousands affected by the floods in Bihar, Mr. Advani said: “Terrorists have no fear because the Congress party and its government are gripped with fear – the fear of losing vote banks – when it comes to uncompromising legal and administrative measures against terrorism.”

He clearly made a connection between terrorists and Muslims by indicating that the Congress was unwilling to fight terrorism for fear of losing Muslims as a vote bank. Yet, he added, it was the BJP’s adversaries, “not us”, who were misrepresenting that the fight against terrorism is a fight against Islam and the Muslim community.

In this context, he alleged that the Sachar Committee report had revealed how the Congress had treated its “most loyal supporters,” the Muslims. If the Indian Muslim had been impoverished the finger of blame should point at the Congress, which alone ruled the country for decades after the Independence. And, again, he blamed the Congress for what he said was a “dangerous slide from special status to separatism” in relation to Jammu and Kashmir.<b>

He charged successive Congress governments with losing all the strategic gains made from the 1971 war leading to the liberation of Bangladesh by ignoring large-scale “infiltration” from the new country that had become a grave threat to security, especially in Assam and the North-East. This was part of the Congress’ “myopic politics of minorityism.”</b>
“Mega failure”

Mr. Advani said he held Prime Minister Manmohan Singh responsible for the government’s “mega failure” to curb terrorism and inflation, the “mega scandal” of the cash-for-votes incident of July 22 related to the trust vote in Parliament, and the “mega fraud” of the Indo-United States nuclear deal in violation of assurances given to Parliament.