BJP blames Opposition for price rise
Tribune News Service

NEW DELHI, Nov 10 — The Bharatiya Janata Party president, Mr Kushabhau Thakre, today blamed the conspiring Opposition, bad weather and limited mandate for various problems confronting the Vajpayee government at the Centre.

Launching the party’s campaign for the November 25 Assembly elections in four states at a specially convened press conference, Mr Thakre said the recent shortage of onions, salt and other commodities leading to their price rise was part of a conspiracy.

The BJP president held two sets of people responsible — those trying to fish in troubled waters (BJP opponents) and profiteers who were directly responsible for this artificial scarcity. Coupled with this, the unseasonal rains had worsened the situation, he added.

Mr Thakre, who made a feeble attempt to defend the seven-month-old BJP-led coalition government on the issue of price rise, said "while the Vajpayee government was not a prisoner of indecision, we have no control on rains".

Grilled by the media on the government’s failure to arrest the prices of essential commodities, the BJP president said "our political opponents have played a conspiring role in the entire price rise episode and some people have also tried to fish in troubled waters." The shortage and price hike of some essential commodities and vegetables in the past few months had been caused by the systematic neglect of agriculture by previous governments over the past few decades, he said.

The BJP-led government inherited a dismal situation whereby the foreign trade in many items of common consumption was the monopoly of institutions like NAFED which ran as extension counters of the Congress, Mr Thakre pointed out.

To a pointed question on the BJP taking support of those political elements who had been involved in cases of corruption, the BJP president defended the party’s stand saying that "sometime one has to accept a lesser evil to fight a bigger evil".

Stressing that there was no other alternative to the BJP-led coalition government at the Centre, Mr Thakre said "the only other alternative was to hand over the government to same set of people whose record is full of scams and cases of corruption".

"Ours is not a single-party government but is dependent on our allies so we can only do that much as per the mandate given to us by the electorate", Mr Thakre said, adding "in spite of these constraints, we are running the government on consensus".

"We have been consulting our allies and opponents," Mr Thakre said. He explained the delay in arriving at a decision on important issues was due to constant consultation with allies. Criticising the Congress for its negative attitude, the BJP leader blamed the party for the government’s inability to get the Women’s Reservation Bill passed by Parliament. The Congress went back on its promise, he said.

Meanwhile, an eight-page statement on choices before the electorate in the November Assembly elections distributed to the media at the press conference said the Vajpayee government had given a decisive leadership and a transparent governance. The statement further said the BJP-led government had been pursuing "nation-first politics".

"The BJP-led government has put the age of confrontation behind us and started a new chapter in the nation’s first politics based on consensus and better Centre-state relations", the statement said.

Criticising the previous Congress and the United Front governments, Mr Thakre said: "It was during the Congress and the Congress-backed UF rule that India became the new frontier of an international terrorist conspiracy. So much so that India and Indians came to be seen as soft targets by those inimical to our nation’s unity and integrity".

"The five nuclear tests in May signalled our commitment to addressing India’s external security concerns. The tests conclusively proved India’s scientific talents are second to none. They also marked India’s emergence as a nuclear deterrent state on a par with the other nuclear powers", the BJP president said.

In an attempt to explain away the economic ills of the Vajpayee government, Mr Thakre said: "The mess is the legacy of 50 years of mismanagement of the economy, pursuit of wrong priorities and adoption of unbalanced development models, primarily by the Congress."

"The common man, long ignored by the Congress both during the licence-permit raj and the years when the IMF and the World Bank were allowed to manage India’s economic affairs, abridging the nation’s economic and political sovereignty had been made the focal point of a new national development programme", Mr Thakre said.