By IANS,
Bhopal : Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and the party’s election in-charge for poll-bound Madhya Pradesh Venkaiah Naidu said here Saturday that his party would work to make right to food a fundamental right when it came to power at the centre.
Coming down heavily on the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, Naidu said the BJP would observe a country-wide strike May 2 against the government’s failure to contain the high prices of essential commodities.
UPA’s economic policies alone were to be blamed for the crisis, he told reporters.
According to him, the high rate of inflation reflects the total failure of the UPA government’s four years in office. The central government, which came to power in the name of ‘aam aadmi’ (common man), has left the ‘aam admi’ bleeding, Naidu said.
Claiming that the inflation has in fact crossed 10 percent, Naidu lashed out at the Left parties, which, according to him, were playing a double game – opposing the government in public and supporting it in parliament.
He assured the Left that the BJP would not claim to form the government if the UPA team falls. “We will go to the people in such a case,” he said.
“Food grains during NDA rule were in abundance and we even exported them so that the farmers did not suffer. But the present government never took care of the food stocks,” Naidu said.
“While the population is growing at the rate of 1.8 percent, food production is increasing by 0.8 percent and it is due to this gap that the provision of food security has become important. The BJP is working on a strategy so that it (food security) could become a reality when the party comes to power at the centre.”
Naidu added that his party would leave no stone unturned to retain power in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh as elections in these three states would be like the semi-final before the 2009 Lok sabha polls.
He also said the party would soon evaluate the 2003 election manifesto to see how many promises were kept by the Madhya Pradesh government and what remains to be done.
“After that, we will hold separate meetings with the veteran leaders of the state, MPs from the state and MLAs to elicit problems of different sections of society and work to solve them accordingly,” Naidu said.