NAGPUR, 15 July 2003 — As the polls to the legislatures of four states approach, the Bharatiya Janata Party and its Hindu fundamentalist allies have intensified their attacks on the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
BJP General Secretary Pramod Mahajan demanded that NCP President Sharad Pawar should immediately resign his Lok Sabha (lower house) seat and seek fresh mandate of voters if his party was joining an alliance with the Congress Party in Maharashtra.
He also demanded that the NCP —- which is running a coalition government in the state — should give up power.
Mahajan accused Sharad Pawar of having made political capital from the foreign origin of Congress President Sonia Gandhi when he left Congress and struck out on his own over the issue. Now Pawar’s party, the NCP, had put this issue on the back-burner and was ready to forge an alliance with Congress.
The battle in the 2004 general election is widely expected to be between Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Sonia Gandhi.
Commenting on the DF government in Maharashtra, Mahajan said that the saffron BJP-Shiv Sena alliance would dethrone the state government led by Sushil Kumar Shinde.
“It’s the weakest, most inefficient, most incompetent and most corrupt government the state ever witnessed” he said.
Mahajan said that voters would defect in droves from Congress and NCP to the saffron camp.
Meanwhile, Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani, who arrived here to attend some functions, said Vajpayee would continue to lead the BJP for many more years.
