|
State of the BJP : Advani sets target for Assembly Polls |
 |
The Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, L.K. Advani, has decided to put the electoral defeat on the backburner and focus on the assembly elections to be held in future. Advani, who has already admitted that his twin catch-phrases India Shining and Feel Good boomeranged, has now set the BJPs priority to win the forthcoming assembly elections in Maharashtra, Bihar, Haryana, Jharkhand and Arunachal Pradesh. On June 10, he addressed the first meeting of the party’s new team of office-bearers. The meeting was attended among others by former ministers Jaswant Singh, and Yashwant Sinha, and general secretaries Arun Jaitley and Pramod Mahajan.
“The electoral verdict went against our expectations. It should prompt us to conduct a serious introspection at all levels of the party”, he said, adding there is no cause to feel despondent. We should focus on the tasks ahead. He said : “No single party or coalition got a clear mandate. We must expose the Congress attempts to project the verdict as a mandate for itself and for its president”, he stressed.
BJP chief Venkaiah Naidu, who will stay in office for the next three years, also addressed the meeting. He called for a complete change in the nature of functioning of office-bearers. Every office-bearer and national executive member must have a specific and continuing responsibility with accountability, he emphasised. We have lost the polls but not our determination, he said, promising a comprehensive review of the results followed by a brainstorming session.
The Bharatiya Janata Party will hold its three-day National Executive meeting on June 21-23 in Mumbai to analyse in detail the causes of defeat in the parliamentary elections.
‘Tainted’ Ministers
Speaking on the burning issue of tainted ministers from whom even the NDA government was not free, Vajpayee defended his ministerial colleagues by saying that the cases against NDA leaders were of political nature unlike those against the UPA leaders. “These (cases) are of different nature. You cannot assess them by one yardstick,” he told reporters when referred to the UPA contention that his government also included “charge-sheeted” ministers.
Vajpayee asserted that a person booked for violating Section 144 of IPC (prohibitory orders), which is a “political crime” could not be classified with “other criminals”. Asked about a statement he had given in parliament as Prime Minister to defend senior party leaders L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi in Babri mosque demolition case, he said “I had given the statement in a different context. On the future strategy of the NDA on the `tainted’ issue, he said while leaving Parliament that it will be unveiled in the next session, a budget session which is to be called soon.
Meanwhile, National Democratic Alliance convener, George Fernandes, has urged the Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary, Harkishan Singh Surjeet, to join the effort to cleanse the body politic of corruption.
In a letter to Surjeet, Fernandes said the Congress-led UPA Government at the Centre had “some notoriously corrupt and criminal elements” and demanded that they be immediately ousted from their offices. Saying that he wanted to join their effort to fight corruption, he said there was a demand, both inside and outside Parliament, for the removal of the Ministers, but the UPA Government, which the CPI (M) had propped up, had chosen to let Parliament be paralysed.
On the other hand, Surjeet challenged George Fernandes to “publicly accept” that the NDA government had committed a “wrong” by keeping charge-sheeted ministers in the council of ministers before inviting the Left to jointly fight corruption and criminalisation of politics.
In his reply to Fernandes’ letter asking the CPI(M) to join the fight against “tainted” ministers in the UPA government, Surjeet said “I am happy that there is a belated realisation on your part that the council of ministers must be kept free from corrupt and criminal elements”.
Referring to three ministers “who were charge-sheeted in the Babri Masjid demolition case and in the Tehelka tapes affair”, Surjeet said “neither were the three ministers including the then Home Minister removed nor even an FIR lodged against those seen taking money in the Tehelka tapes”.
On the issue of “tainted” ministers, the CPI(M) leader said the Left was of the opinion that charge sheeted persons should not be inducted as ministers but “we also accept the fact that Prime minister has the prerogative to choose his ministers”.
|
