NEW DELHI, 23 February 2004 - Asserting that India was not shining but wilting under the 'misrule' of the NDA, Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) President Ramvilas Paswan yesterday said the ruling combine at the center would be "decimated" in the Lok Sabha elections. "When 98 percent of India is wilting under the NDA misrule, the BJP-led coalition government claims that the country is shining. They have not yet read the writing on the wall," he added.
Castigating the government for launching the 'India shining' ad blitz when 400 million of the population are caught in the morass of illiteracy, the LJP leader said the BJP-led government had been pursuing faulty policies in the last three years which compounded the misery of the poor. While 50 million children are doing 'forced labor', 20,000 farmers have preferred death to indignity, he said.
The former union minister also pulled up the BJP for relying on English slogans. "It is India which is shining and not Bharat," he said, stressing that only two percent of the English speaking population were making hay at the cost of the 98 percent of the toiling masses in the country.
Addressing a well-attended rally after attending the national congress in Patna, where he was re-elected the party president, Paswan announced his decision to ally with the ruling RJD and the Congress in Bihar and Jharkhand to defeat the BJP-led NDA in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections.
