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BJP plans campaign against Congress stand on Bihar

The Bharatiya Janata Party Tuesday said it would launch a nation-wide campaign against the Congress for ''hoisting misrule'' in Bihar by opposing the ratification of the President's rule.

Party spokesman K L Sharma, MP, said they would also launch an agitation throughout Bihar against the ruling Rashtriya Janata Dal.

His party would, thus, expose the 'anti-dalit' and 'anti-people' role of both the Congress and the RJD, he added.

Charging the Congress for misusing Article 356 over 100 times, the BJP leader pointed out that it was misused 48 times during Indira Gandhi's tenure as prime minister. And in almost all those cases, the ground reality for imposing Central rule was not as severe as it is now in Bihar, he added.

''The Congress has to pay a heavy price for this act,'' he cautioned.

Sharma also charged the party with setting a ''bad precedence'' in Parliament by trying to drag the top brass of the armed forces to the House. He said the government would stoutly oppose the Congress demand to have dismissed naval chief Vishnu Bhagawat during a discussion.

"It has never happened in the history of Parliament," Sharma said.

The spokesman said the BJP's parliamentary party discussed these two subjects at its meeting Tuesday. Home Minister L K Advani gave a detailed account of what happened in respect of Bihar. Later, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who presided over the meeting, rounded up the discussions and asked the members to be ''alert'' and present in the House all the time to meet any exigency since the Congress was not trustworthy.

''It (the Congress) says one thing and does just the opposite,'' Sharma said.

UNI

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