Date:10/09/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/09/10/stories/2007091055440100.htm

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Be ready for elections, says Antony

Staff Reporter

Union Defence Minister A.K. Antony

KOTTAYAM: Defence Minister and Congress Working Committee member A.K. Antony has called upon Congress workers to be prepared for the battle of the ballot at the national level in the face of the increasing number of unpredictable components entering the political stream resulting in fast-paced political changes.

He was inaugurating a party convention organised by the District Congress Committee here on Sunday.

Expressing satisfaction with the relatively better preparedness of the grassroots-level workers, he stressed the need to bring back sections of society which had moved away from the party and the United Democratic Front before the last Assembly elections. “During the second half of the last UDF rule, something happened, somewhere the nuts and bolts got loosened and many people, sections of society and areas which were once UDF strongholds started believing that they would get justice only from the Left,” Mr. Antony said. They thought the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) had changed, that it was much different from the party which existed in 1957. As a result of the temporary indignation expressed by sections of society, the UDF lost the Parliament polls and allowed a Government which neither adhered to democratic principles nor had a sense of justice to come to power in the Assembly elections, Mr. Antony said.

He criticised the move on the part of the Government to launch an agitation against the Centre, saying that such slogans had become obsolete.