By Sanjay Sharma, IANS
Bhopal : Accusing the Congress of having “succumbed to the US pressure to make India accept the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)”, senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader L.K. Advani said here Sunday that his party favoured nuclear energy without compromising on the nuclear weapons option.
Addressing the party’s national executive meet on its third and concluding day, Advani said: “The BJP was the only party which, right since its Jan Sangh days, demanded that India become a nuclear weapons state and even supported Indira Gandhi at the time of Pokharan-I in 1974.
“Every Indian prime minister from Indira Gandhi to Atal Bihari Vajpayee had refused to sign the discriminatory NPT. In contrast, both (Congress president) Sonia Gandhi and (prime minister) Dr. Manmohan Singh not only opposed Pokharan-II but have also succumbed to the US pressure to make India accept the NPT – an infringement of our sovereignty.”
He called upon the party workers to “educate” people on how the Congress leadership wants to undo the gains of Pokharan-II – the nuclear tests of 1998 – by effectively agreeing to roll-back and ultimately eliminate India’s nuclear capability.”
“The common man may not fully understand the technicalities of the nuclear deal, the 123 agreement, the Hyde Act etc, but the BJP should go on the offensive by telling our patriotic people – for even ordinary Indians understand the language of patriotism – that the Congress wants to weaken India’s security and sovereignty whereas the BJP wants to protect and further strengthen them,” said leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha (parliament’s lower house).
“We should also tell the people that the BJP wants friendly relations with America but on equal terms. The BJP wants India to catch the ‘nuclear energy bus’ but without getting off from the ‘nuclear weapons bus’, and it also wants India to become a major global power, whereas the Congress is willing to accept ties with America on unequal terms, get down the ‘nuclear weapons bus’ to accept a seat on the ‘nuclear energy bus’ and it wants India to become a subordinate power in an essentially unipolar World.”
The BJP leader also accused the Congress of indulging in the dangerous game of “self-destabilisation” of the UPA government, put the blame for it on others, and then seek a mandate from the people on the basis of a lie that it (the Congress) alone wants the country’s development and it alone is committed to India’s energy security while all others are creating hurdles in its way by opposing the India-US nuclear deal.
“The BJP must firmly counter this false, mischievous and self-serving propaganda. We should tell people how the Congress is compromising national security by doggedly pursing a flawed and unequal ‘energy security’ deal with the US,” he urged the party workers.
Advai hoped that common men and farmers will teach the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government a lesson, as “they feel extremely betrayed – particularly because of the prices of all essential commodities have risen.”
“But prices aren’t going to be the only issue on which the UPA government would be in the dock in the impending Lok Sabha election,” he said.
The other issues, according to him, will be farmers’ suicides, failure on the internal security front, repeal of the anti-terror POTA law, massive infiltration from Bangladesh, Maoist violence, the Ram Sethu-Sethusamudram issue, the nuclear deal with the US, corruption, and the government’s failure to prevent the rise of anti-India forces in neighbouring countries.
“People of the country are waiting eagerly for the BJP to lift the country, once again, from the morass created by the Congress and we have a national duty to rise to the occasion,” he said.