Kesri, Deve Gowda, Kanshi Ram blast BJP

Congress president Sitaram Kesri on Sunday blasted the Bharatiya Janata Party, cautioning the people of its ''double standards''.

Addressing a party rally in Sonepat district of Haryana, Kesri said the BJP was adopting ''unprincipled and unfair means'' to achieve power, including ''engineering defections from other parties and horse-trading''.

On the one hand the BJP celebrates Gandhi Jayanti, on the other it calls the Father of the Nation a rakshasa (demon).

On his first visit to Haryana after taking over as Congress chief, Kesri said the BJP's face was still stained with the blood of Mahatma Gandhi. He was assassinated by a follower of the Rashtriya Swyamsewak Sangh, he added.

''Today, the BJP leaders are claiming all the great Congress leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose and Lal Bahadur Shastri as their own and trying to cash in on them,'' the Congress president said.

What has happened in Uttar Pradesh, where they engineered defections, has exposed the BJP completely, he said.

Expressing similar views, Bahujan Samaj Party president Kanshi Ram alleged that the BJP had bribed Congress and BSP legislators to save the Kalyan Singh government

Addressing the media in Satna, Madhya Pradesh, the BSP chief alleged that the legislators were given Rs 5 million each to support the government. He said these legislators were also offered posts.

Claiming that the BJP would not get more than 100 seats in the next Lok Sabha election, Kanshi Ram said his party would join hands with anyone to defeat the BJP.

Replying to a question, he claimed that his party would win at least 160 of the total 320 assembly seats in Madhya Pradesh. He said the BSP would emerge as ''a balancing factor in Indian politics'' after the next elections.

Kanshi Ram also alleged that 90 per cent of journalists in the country were BJP workers.

The BJP was also criticised by former prime minister and United Front chairman H D Deve Gowda.

Addressing a rally in Khalilabad, Uttar Pradesh, Deve Gowda said the BJP has brought down the image of the country with its act of violence on the floor of Uttar Pradesh assembly on October 21.

The BJP talked of value-based politics, but it stooped to horse-trading in order to strengthen its majority in the UP assembly, he alleged.

Urging the people to end caste and religion-based politics, Deve Gowda said they had hit developmental activities in the country. ''Mandir and masjid cannot fill empty bellies,'' he said.

Accusing the Congress of being an anti-farmer party, Deve Gowda said during its four-decade rule in the country the farmers interests were ignored.

He said the Congress leadership had demanded his ouster as prime minister following his rising popularity in view of his pro-farmer decisions.

Meanwhile, Congress MP Datta Meghe says political parties must give up their BJP-phobia and avoid formation of alliances of heterogeneous parties to keep it out of power.

He said if the BJP is voted to power, it should be given a chance to rule. After all, BJP members are Indians and not foreigners, he said.

Meghe said the BJP would never come to power at the Centre on its own as the days of one-party rule have gone. The only way of avoiding a costly mid-term poll was the formation of a national government at the Centre, he added.

UNI

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