Favouring an end to personal attacks and mud-slinging in election campaigns, BJP today asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to take the initiative on the issue.
“The Prime Minister should never get personally involved in any kind of smear campaign. I hope that the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself would take an initiative to bring an end to this ongoing mud-slinging in the name of election campaigning,” BJP president Rajnath Singh told reporters here.
Hitting out at the Congress-led UPA, he accused it of running a slanderous campaign to divert public attention from the real issues by levelling “baseless charges” against his party and its leadership.
In healthy democracy, launching personal attacks on Opposition leaders can never be appreciated and it is the moral obligation of the Opposition parties to exercise their right to constructive criticism of the incumbent government, he told reporters here.
“If the Opposition parties criticise the Prime Minister for his actions, then, instead of the Prime Minister defending himself, his own party should come forward to defend him,” Singh said. Singh’s comments come amid escalating war of words between Manmohan Singh and BJP leader L K Advani whose oft-repeated charge against the Prime Minister of being “weak” has irked the Congress, which has launched an onslaught against the saffron party’s Prime Ministerial candidate.
Under attack from the Congress on the Kandahar episode, BJP also sought to turn the tables on the UPA’s lead party saying it “did not utter a single word” against the consensus arrived at an all-party meeting to release the terrorists.
“When the NDA government convened the all party meet to resolve the crisis, Congress was also present but it did not utter even a single word of protest against the consensus to ensure safe release of all passengers,” Rajnath Singh said.
“Congress has (now) gone ballistic on Kandahar issue where it was a party to the decision taken. It has completely forgotten its own misdeeds in Charar-e-Sharief where the then Congress government ensured safe passage to five dreaded terrorists that too in a situation where there were no hostages,” he said.
Those who negotiated with terrorists who had laid siege to the Charar-e-Sharief shrine in Srinagar in 1995, are today blaming the BJP for a decision which was taken in a crisis situation, Singh charged.
“Congress needs to keep in mind the age-old adage that people living in glass houses should not throw stones,” he quipped.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi have persistently attacked L K Advani on the Kandahar episode in their counter-offensive against the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate for his oft-repeated charge that UPA was soft on terror.
