BJP targeting Constitution, says Sonia

By Arunkumar Bhatt

NAGPUR, APRIL 14. The Congress(I) president, Ms. Sonia Gandhi, has categorically declared that her party will not cooperate with the ruling NDA in its RSS-inspired `conspiracy' of changing the Constitution.

Addressing the party rally held at the Kasturchand

Park here today `to save the Constitution' on the birth anniversary of Dr. Ambedkar, she alleged the BJP had made the Constitution its `target' only to hide its failures and because the statute prevented it from implementing its communal agenda.

The BJP was a `puppet of the RSS' and hence neither the Prime Minister nor any other BJP leader had criticised the RSS chief when he talked about `scrapping' the Constitution.

The Constitution was amended in the past whenever the situation arose, but she alleged the present review could be `nothing but a conspiracy'. There was no national problem that warranted such a move, she said and added that the Constitution was a symbol of the democratic aspirations of the people.

Citing the late Dr. Ambedkar's concluding speech in the Constitutional Assembly, Ms. Gandhi said that in his view even a bad Constitution in the hands of good people would work well and deliver goods but a good Constitution would fail in the hands of bad people. The Indian Constitution was one of the best in the world and was the framed by eminent persons from different segments of the society.

Without naming Pakistan she said the countries which played with their Constitution had weakened their very foundations and an example could be found in the Indian neighbourhood. ``We will not let this ever happen,'' she asserted.

Dr. Ambedkar had great respect for Gandhiji and it was wrong to say that they were opposed to each other. Their views could have differed but their aims and objectives were the same, she said.

The Congress(I) president criticised the RSS without naming it even once, calling it ``anti-national and even anti- humanity''. The BJP, influenced by the RSS, had attempted to communalise the administration in Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh and had the Congress(I) not protested, they would have communalised the administration throughout the country.

4 NCP leaders join Cong.(I)

A belligerent Maharashtra Congress(I) presented Ms. Gandhi with a slice of the NCP - its hostile ally in the State and a bitter rival in New Delhi - by engineering the defection of four key leaders to assure her that they could check Mr. Sharad Pawar's party though they shared power with it.

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