BJP general secretary M Venkiah Naidu yesterday came down heavily on the CPI(M) and the CPI leaders for their role in the reconcilation efforts between the United Front and the Congress. He described the Left parties as the chief deal makers in the corrupt and scandalous UF-Congress alliance.
He told a news conference here that the CPM and CPI leaders had spent all their life fighting corruption and the anti-people and anti-poor policies of the government.
But today, respectable Left leaders like Har Kishan Singh Surjeet have become the mentor of people like Sitaram Kesari, Karunakaran and Gulam Nabi Azad, Naidu said.Naidu alleged that his party had received credible information that the United Front and the Congress had worked out a patch-up formula, under which the Dr Tanwar murder case and the palm oil scandal will be closed and the Bofors gun case diluted. There was also considerable pressure on the Deve Gowda government to dilute the fodder scam case, he said. because of the possibility of JD president Laloo Prasad Yadav being named in the FIR.
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Naidu said while the BJP was strongly opposed to the use of government machinery for persecution of political opponents, we are equally opposed to the cover-up of crimes and corruption scandals for narrow political expediency.
Stating that there were in all 103 criminal cases pending investigation in courts involving Congress and Janata Dal leaders, Naidu demanded that Deve Gowda come out clean and make it known whether any of these cases were being closed or diluted.
He said any patch-up between the United Front and the Congress was bad for the country but is good for the BJP.
Stating that his party was everready for fresh elections with corruption as the main plank of their campaigning, Naidu said any Congress-UF patch up can only postpone and not avoid a mid-term poll.
He said the party had already asked its cadre to prepare for elections and expand the base of the party by enlisting cooperation of social groups like fishermen, slum dwellers, weavers, bidi workers, rikshaw pullers, toddy tappers etc.
The party will also take up regional problems and find solutions to them.