Date:04/06/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/06/04/stories/2008060455681200.htm

National

BJP feels the countdown has begun

Neena Vyas

Political resolution harps on two issues

Inflation, insecure environment to be potent planks
Says it will reintroduce POTA

NEW DELHI: The next Lok Sabha election is a good one year away but the Bharatiya Janata Party has declared that not only will it begin preparations for the electoral battle straight away, in the coming months it will also “prepare itself for assuming responsibilities of governance.”

Elated by the Karnataka victory, the party’s political resolution, adopted at its national executive committee meeting on Monday and released on Tuesday, assumes that the countdown has begun for a BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) regime at the Centre.

The two most potent weapons it has, the party said, were inflation, especially the high cost of food that was hurting the poorest the most, and an insecure environment in which terrorists hit wherever and whenever they pleased.

While these two issues were dealt with in detail in the speech of BJP president Rajnath Singh delivered here on Sunday, the party elaborated on them in the political resolution.

‘Policy contradictions’

On inflation and economic policies of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), the BJP stated that the “policy contradictions between the UPA and the Left have paralysed decision-making,” and described this as a “self-inflicted paralysis.”

The government, it said, was practising the art of survival and increasing its own life in the “absence of any economic reform or decision making.”

Surprisingly, the BJP also ran down Rs. 76,000-crore debt waiver scheme for farmers and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, saying these schemes would not be able to go to the roots of the problem. The goal of these schemes was “narrowly electoral.”

Cites ‘NDA growth’

Ignoring the 9 per cent growth record of the UPA, the BJP claimed that “the momentum of economic growth that was achieved during six years of NDA rule has now been lost.”

Attacking the Congress for its “soft on terrorism” approach, the BJP promised a “hard approach” that would show “no mercy.” The party said it would reintroduce the Prevention of Terrorism Act and strengthen intelligence gathering.

The Prime Minister’s suggestion for setting up a federal agency to deal with terror, the party said, would not work without such agency being given special POTA-like powers.