By IANS,
Bhopal : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Thursday accused the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government of dragging its feet on promulgating a tough law on countering terrorism despite the Administrative Reforms Commission recommending this, and promised to bring the measure if it comes to power at the centre.
“The Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) has recommended a tough law on terror. It’s more than 10 days since the bomb blasts in Delhi but the UPA government has still not decided on introducing a stringent anti-terror law. It seems that they are not serious about this,” the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate L.K. Advani told a huge gathering of party workers here.
With the upcoming state polls and next year’s general elections in mind, the Madhya Pradesh unit of the BJP had organized organized the rally, christened Karyakarta Mahakumbh, at the sprawling Jamboori ground here. The party claimed that more than 300,000 workers from across the state attended the rally.
“The UPA government led by the Congress is yet to learn its lessona from the serial blasts in Delhi and instead of formulating a tough law to fight terrorism, it is simply playing vote bank politics ahead of the general elections,” Advani charged.
The government, he said, was not only soft on terror but also the the “most inefficient one”, had compromised national security and pushed the price-graph due to its envelope.
“Earlier Congress governments were corrupt but the present one is the most inefficient and corrupt as its financial mismanagement has led to rising inflation”, Advani maintained.
Promising to eliminate terrorism from the country if the BJP came to power, Advani called upon party workers to put in their best to retain power in the state and ensure the UPA was voted out of power at the general elections.
“Only the party workers can help the party retain power in the state and come to power at the centre and they should start working for it from this very moment”, he said.
BJP president Rajnath Singh had earlier spoken in the same vein.
“Terrorism has increased all over the country. Anti-nationals are targeting the states one after the other but the Congress is still hesitant to go in for a strict law to deal with such elements,” he said while addressing the rally.
The BJP leader also charged the Congress with compromising on national security for the sake of vote bank politics.
“The Congress is shying away from bringing a strict law to deal with terror only for the sake of its vote bank,” Rajnath Singh maintained.
The BJP president said the only things the people had got during the UPA regime were “inflation and terrorism”.
“The Congress has been saying that price rise is a global phenomenon and the result of rising oil prices. Why have the prices not come down now when the price of oil has fallen in the international market?” he asked.
“They have also been misleading the people by saying that the GDP growth and a check on inflation cannot go together whereas this is not the fact. We didn’t allow inflation to climb even when economic sanctions were imposed on us,” Singh said of the previous BJP-led government at the centre.
Showering praise on Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Singh said: “Going by the good work that Chouhan has done for the people of this state, no power on earth can stop the BJP from retaining power in Madhya Pradesh. He has accomplished what I couldn’t do when I was the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh.”
“I have never seen such a huge collection of party workers in my life. This is indicative of Chouhan’s popularity and I can say with confidence that the BJP will form the government in the state once again under his (Chouhan’s) leadership,” Singh said.