Senior BJP leader and former Union minister Murli Manohar Joshi has said the anti-BJP stand of the United Front, formed by a conglomerate of 15 parties, would not help in keeping the Deve Gowda government in power for long and it had been just given a little more oxygen to be artificially alive.
Joshi, who was here yesterday on his way to inaugurate a training conference for Tamil Nadu central and western district BJP workers at Namakkal in Rajaji district yesterday, said the short-lived BJP government was brought down by those who were deeply entrenched in corruption and combined together in the garb of secularism.
Asked how the Gowda government was in a position to present its second budget despite the BJPs statements that the United Front government would not last for long, he said his partys perception was that due to inner contradictions brewing up within the government, it would collapse fast.
It was based on these facts that we said the government would fall soon and even now we are sure that it would collapse any day, he said.
It is only that it is being kept artificially alive for the time being, Joshi said.
When asked how the BJP had benefitted from the 13-day experiment at the centre, Joshi said the people had an experience that there were responsible and well meaning administrators in the country. Atal Behari Vajpayee has been identified as the most honest Prime Minister of the country because he refused to adopt any shady method to convert his minority government into a majority one. Vajpayee had openly proclaimed that he would run a honest government based on principles but he was not allowed to continue, he said.
The BJP leader said the shape of Indian economy had gone from bad to worse and the United Front government had compromised with national economic interest .
by its attitude at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) ministerial level conference in Singapore, where it agreed for the formation of a study group on investments and other subjects.
The government was also in deep trouble as during the last meeting of dispute settlement, the WTO had ruled out categorically that there was any Balance of Payment (BoP) crisis in India, Joshi said.
Joshi said that due to the WTO findings on BoP, many quantitative restrictions on imports have to be removed by India, while subsidies also had to go and the country would have to import at least three per cent of its food requirements.
With the country facing a difficult situation, it had also further bungled by reversing Modvat for Vabal, leading to non-recovery of Rs 1,00,000 crore as arrears in tax difference, he claimed.
The results of the recent by-elections, especially in Chhindwara and Nagaur where Congress had never lost any election, elections to Punjab and municipal corporations of Mumbai and Delhi indicated a pro-BJP trend among the people, he said.
Joshi parried a question on the fall of BJPs government in Gujarat saying it was an incident of the past. He, however, charged the Congress with having a hand in the downfall of the Suresh Mehta ministry.
Asked if the BJP was toying with the idea of entering into an alliance with the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu, since it was the only party to criticise the arrest of former Chief Minister Jayalalitha, he said his party always criticised moves which it felt were wrong. It had also criticised the dismissal of the Farooq Abdullah government a few years ago.
