By IANS,
New Delhi : Taking a dig at the Congress for being unable to stitch a coalition with its United Progressive Alliance partners, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Thursday termed the Congress and the UPA as a “sinking ship”.
“In the last fortnight, all the allies of the Congress were leaving the UPA one after the other because the UPA and the Congress are a sinking ship,” BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters here.
“After Mulayam Singh Yadav (Samajwadi Party), Laloo Prasad Yadav (Rashtriya Janata Dal), Ram Vilas Paswan (Lok Janshakti Party) and A. Ramdoss (PMK), it is now the turn of Sharad Pawar (Nationalist Congress Party) to desert the Congress and the badly fragmented UPA,” he said.
The BJP leader said that the NCP has already declared that Manmohan Singh is the prime ministerial candidate of the “Congress and not of the UPA”.
“To rub salt in spite of being supposedly a key constituent of the UPA, Pawar is going to attend a Third Front rally in Orissa,” he added.
NCP chief Sharad Pawar is expected to participate in an election rally of Third Front leaders in Orissa Friday.
“It is evident that all the so-called UPA allies are fighting among themselves and they realise to their dismay that keeping company with the Congress would spell disaster. They or the uncertain Third Front cannot be expected to give any stable government for the country,” Prasad further said.
Earlier in the day, Home Minister P. Chidambaram said, “He (NCP chief Sharad Pawar) has alliance with us in Maharashtra and attempts are there to stitch an alliance in Gujarat. It would be good if he doesn’t share platform with the parties who are opposed to the Congress.”