It took NDA ally Mamata Banerjee nine attempts to show the Congress its place. The BJP was gifted with a powerful armoury provided by the CAG .It had two full sessions in Parliament as the Congress struggled and yet the BJP strangely never even growled.  In fact, it shied away from the main arena of the Lok Sabha / Rajya Sabha and even the JPC. For nine months it held on to Anna’s bandwagon and nothing came of it. Now it is clapping Mamata from the sidelines after her hint at walkout from UPA-II.

The BJP never had an alternate agenda after UPA-II came to power and, secondly, without proper allies the BJP post -Vajpayee came to be worse-placed than the Congress. The hard fact is that the BJP is not sure of Modi’s performance in the coming Gujarat assembly elections. It does not want to go ahead with an agenda that could in some way harm Modi’s prospects. When Modi is re-elected as the CM, the BJP will begin to fine-tune its agenda suitably to attract allies and line up coalition equations both at the Centre and in the states.The BJP is paying a heavy price for trying to secure Gujarat for Modi, losing relevance at the national stage in the process.

R NARAYANAN, Ghaziabad

PM’s silence

The UPA government may be wrong on coal scams but the role played by the BJP was equally hateful. No one can appreciate the party wasting crores of rupees for not conducting Parliament proceedings (“Silence is no more an option for the PM” by Raj Chengappa, September 9). He is right in saying that the BJP was wrong in disrupting Parliament and not allowing a debate on the subject despite it being the proper forum to address the controversy.

As a matter of fact, now the time has come when the Prime Minister must break his silence on coal block allocation and preset the facts as he sees them to the nation. Let him do so with simple arithmetic.

SUBHASH C TANEJA, Gurgaon

Unethical trend

It is an eye-opening and very apt observation in the editorial “Politics over gas: States to feel the heat” (September 21) that the politics of competitive populism will ruin the country. One Indian in a particular state can take only six gas cylinders whereas another Indian in a different state can take nine gas cylinders. How can this be in consonance with equality and equal rights? Our politicians avail all the time and space dividing the people and communities. On their mind, their party comes before the nation, it seems. This is an unethical trend. Most of the plans of development are prepared with an eye on vote banks. Matters of national importance and security get neglected. As a result, the nation suffers due to populist measures adopted for prosperity of only certain sections of the population. Election reforms are overdue. It will in the national interest if along with economic reforms, political reforms are also carried out before the next general election to cleanse the political environment.

SC VAID, Greater Noida

Suicide is no solution

Suicide is a very emotive subject. It can be prevented by reducing social isolation, social disintegration and treating mental disorders (Editorial, “Taking the extreme step”, September 20). Suicide is not a solution to the problem but fighting with the circumstances is. Those who commit suicides are driven by a momentary decision rather than by a carefully thought-out action.  Suicides are meaningless since the perpetrators of the crime do not have a goal or motive to fulfil, but its effect on the concerned families is heart-breaking and devastating. 

It is often termed as a permanent solution to a temporary problem but efforts have to be made to prevent them by determining a number of social factors, which should not be ignored when timely intervention is required.