Chandigarh, May 12
A day after Indian Foreign Minister S M Krishna announced that he would pay his maiden visit to Pakistan in July to hold talks with his counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi, the Bharatiya Janata Party has vehemently opposed resumption of any dialogue. In doing so, India’s principal opposition party has thrown a major dampener over the outcome of the talks.

BJP chief Nitin Gadkari, in an exclusive interview with The Tribune Editor-in-Chief Raj Chengappa here today, said: “India should not hold any talks with Pakistan — our party is against it. The talks will have no relevance as Pakistan has done nothing to end cross-border terrorism. By resuming talks with Pakistan, the UPA government would be repeating a big mistake.”

The BJP chief, who was in the city to address a series of rallies, charged the UPA government with using dilatory tactics and playing vote bank politics over the issue of carrying out the death sentence delivered to Kasab by the special court for his role in the Mumbai 26/11 attack. He said: “This government is always talking big but it has no courage to fight terrorism. The government has no guts to punish Afzal Guru though the Supreme Court has already given its judgment. It must now move fast on Kasab’s verdict and act on it.”

Gadkari was critical about the performance of the UPA government, which is set to complete a year of its second term on May 22. He said the government had failed to curb inflation and had totally failed “on internal and external security in terms of tackling terrorism and Naxalites. Overall, I would give it 0 out of 10 for its performance and 10 out of 10 on corruption.”

He was on the defensive though about his party’s flip-flop over developments in Jharkand and justified the BJP indulging in horse-trading to form a government there, saying it’s “in the wider interest of stability for Jharkand and to avoid President’s Rule.”

On the party’s failure of the cut motion in the Lok Sabha, the BJP chief accused the UPA government of misusing the CBI to blackmail the other opposition parties into compliance.

Also watch a video of the interview on www.tribuneindia.com