Date:18/12/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/12/18/stories/2007121855311000.htm

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Electioneering comes to close in Himachal

Kanwar Yogendra

Vote for Congress for maintaining stability in development, says Prime Minister

— Photo: PTI

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh waving to the gathering at a Congress rally at Bilaspur on Monday.

SHIMLA: The three week-long campaign in the hill State for 65 seats in the second and final phase of the Assembly elections ended here on Monday.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wound up the Congress campaign, addressing rallies at Bilaspur and Palampur, while BJP leader L.K. Advani spoke at meetings at Fatehpur in Kangra and Shimla.

Dr. Singh said the BJP was trying to divide the people on regional, caste and religious lines, and it indulged in corrupt practices during its tenure at the Centre and in the State.

At the Bilaspur rally, he said: “You know when it was in power, development came to a standstill and the State exchequer became empty.”

Dr. Singh sought another chance for the Congress for maintaining stability in development, which, he said, would suffer if the people voted for the BJP. “Vote for Congress if you want an environment of development and peace in the State. If you bring the Congress to power in Himachal, the Centre will give more financial help to the State”, he assured the voters.

NREGS extended

The Centre had extended the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme to all 12 districts of the State and also taken up work on the Bhanupali-Bilaspur rail line project, a long pending demand. The Centre had chosen Shimla for the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission, under which infrastructure would be developed on a massive scale.

In his campaign, Mr. Advani said the chances of early Lok Sabha polls would recede if the BJP won the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh Assembly elections.

Criticising the UPA government for being “soft on terrorism” and “bartering away” the security interests of the country to “appease the minorities,” he said it was a sad commentary on the functioning of the government that Afzal Guru, the main accused in the Parliament attack case, had not yet been hanged in spite of the High Court and the Supreme Court upholding the death sentence awarded to him by a lower court.

‘Minority politics’

Attributing the phenomenal growth of the BJP from a party of just two seats in the Lok Sabha in 1984 to Ayodhya temple movement, Mr. Advani said it was a national campaign which exposed the “pseudo-secularism and minority politics of the Congress.”

“Corruption-free”

Stressing the need for electing a government which assured good governance, he said the BJP government in Gujarat was a model of good governance.

It was a “corruption-free government working for welfare of the State.”