PM attacks BJP, BSP

NI Wire

New Delhi

Sat, 25 Apr 2009: 

Lashing out both at the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate L K Advani and Mayawati’s BSP government in Uttar Pradesh, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday accused the former for playing “divisive politics” and the latter for “creating obstacles to reach benefits of central schemes to ople”.

Addressing an election rally in support of Congress candidate and union minister of state Sriprakash Jaiswal at the Motijheel ground in Kanpur, Dr. Singh attacked at BJP over tall claim in its slogan of majboot neta aur nirnayak sarkar (a strong leader and a decisive government).

‘BJP has no ground for making tall claim on terrorism. People are aware of what the NDA government did. It was during their time the Parliament was attacked, Red Fort was attacked and the then External Affairs Minister himself escorted the terrorists to Kandhar,’ he said.

BJP has no agenda except indulging in the communal politics, Dr. Singh said: “we cannot take the nation forward with the politics based on hatred and division. For the country to progress, we will have to adopt the path of secularism.

The Prime Minister said since the Mumbai attack his government has taken some strong steps to counter terrorism such as improving intelligence, better training and modernisation of police and intelligence agencies.

The UPA government has taken stringent steps to counter terrorism but will not allow any particular community to be targeted in the process, he said and appealed the people and the political parties to fight the battle against terrorism jointly.

Dr. Singh also accused Mayawati government for not letting the benefits of central schemes to reach people. “My government has increased the central assistance in the last five years from 9,500 crores to 35,000 crores in Uttar Pradesh. However, in many schemes like the National Rural Health Mission the state government has not been able to spend the money.”

In a bid to reach the minority community, Dr. Singh said the UPA government had set up a separate ministry, which launched several schemes for their welfare; scholarships were being provided to minority students, programmes were being launched for community’s upliftment in the 90 identified backward districts being dominated by minorities.

Polling will take place in this constituency in the third phase of Lok Sabha elections on April 30.