NEW DELHI, 22 February 2004 — Stung by the Congress criticizing BJP’s “feel-good” campaign as “no good” without jobs or food, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee claimed yesterday that the government had succeeded in fulfilling perple’s “dreams.” “We not only dream but also fulfill them,” Vajpayee said.
Earlier, Congress President Sonia Gandhi had labeled the high targets set out by the BJP-led government as “Mungerilal ke sunhere sapne” (Golden dreams of Mungerilal – an average Indian).
Claiming that the economy’s growth rate would soon touch 9 percent, Vajpayee said: “Our growth rate has surprised the world but the opposition appears confused on it and therefore this criticism.” He was addressing a meeting at his residence organized by the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, affiliated to the Sangh Parivar.
Confronting the opposition charge about growing unemployment, Vajpayee said: “Employment opportunities have increased even though there may not be an increase in government jobs.”
Referring to thousands of persons employed in projects such as road construction and infrastructure work, the premier said: “People have to be employed whether it is big or small jobs.”
Targeting the Congress leadership, BJP President M. Venkaiah Naidu said that the party’s declining graph would reduce its strength to two digit figures in the next Lok Sabha. He was speaking in Hoshiarpur, Punjab to kickstart BJP’s political campaign in the state.
Describing Congress members as “nirash and hatash” (upset and desperate), Naidu said: “The present leadership of the Congress is not enough to make it victorious.”
Meanwhile, the Congress has announced that rising unemployment and farmers’ interest would be the focus of its electoral manifesto. It would also pursue the peace process in Jammu and Kashmir and with Pakistan if it was elected to power.
“The Congress will further strengthen the ongoing peace process to change the shape of Jammu and Kashmir ,” Congress general secretary Ambika Soni and state president Ghulam Nabi Azad said in Srinagar yesterday.
Unemployment would top the party’s agenda. “We are drafting a program under which every family in the country will have at least one earning member and it will be included in the party’s manifesto which will be finalized in a few days,” she said. “A special program for farmers of the country would also be formulated so that their condition is improved as well.”
With war of words between the BJP and Congress getting sharper, the two have also started pointing fingers at each other’s coalition claims. It is for the first time that Congress is jumping into the electoral fray with an open mind about forming a coalition government.
Describing BJP President Naidu’s claim that Congress has failed to rope in any alliance partners as “baseless and far from truth,” Soni said: “Congress has worked out several alliances in south, Maharashtra, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh. We are determined to defeat communal forces, like BJP, in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls with support from secular parties and the left front.”
BJP has faced some criticism from its own ally TDP for raking up the Ayodhya issue. TDP supremo N. Chandrababu Naidu said yesterday in Hyderabad that the BJP cannot raise Ayodhya issue and only NDA agenda will be implemented if the alliance comes back to power.
He said: “TDP is very clear on secularism. In the last five years, we have stuck to our secular identity and ideology. We strongly believe that unless secularism is followed, this country cannot develop. If we want to take the country forward together, then secularism cannot be given up.”
Advani ‘Happy’ to Visit Pakistan If Invited
Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani said he would be “happy” to visit Pakistan after national polls in India due April-May, Indian media reported yesterday.
Often labeled a “hawk” for his hard-line approach toward Pakistan, Advani told reporters he would be happy to visit Pakistan if “there is an official invitation”, newspapers quoted him as saying.
But Advani, known to be a movie-lover, said he would have to watch the forthcoming India-Pakistan cricket series on television, rather than attend in person, because he was preoccupied with national polls here.
“I am very excited about the cricket matches, but I cannot go to Pakistan to watch them because of ensuing Parliament polls. I will watch them on the TV,” he was quoted as saying.
However, he added: “I will feel happy to go to Pakistan after the elections if there is an official invitation.”
Advani recalled that his last visit to Pakistan was in 1978 when Islamabad invited him to Karachi to watch an India-Pakistan cricket match.
“I was the information and broadcasting minister then and I met the then Pakistan President Zia ul-Haq.”
Advani also recalled that during that visit he had expressed a wish to visit his school and to see his home in Karachi and how Pakistani officials had gone to great lengths to find some of his old school teachers.
According to the BJP website, Advani was born in 1929 in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi.
He studied there in St. Patrick’s school and was the organizer of the BJP’s ideological mentor, the Hindu Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, in the city at the time of the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947.
His family moved to India after the subcontinent split into two independent nations — India and Pakistan.
