NEW DELHI: The Opposition parties together booked the six-month-old BJP/NDA Government on Monday. Stung by the BJP’s aggressive rally on their home turf Kolkata, Trinamool Congress MPs flaunted ‘red’ books in Parliament alleging BJP chief Amit Shah’s name had surfaced in Sahara chief Subrata Roy’s diary.
Meanwhile, the Congress released a booklet at its party headquarters calling the NDA a ‘U-turn Government’. The 30-page booklet in English, plays on a slogan: “Chhe mahine paar, U-turn Sarkar’. In other words, the Congress claimed that the BJP has done endless number of ‘somersaults’, ever since it came to power.
The Congress communication head Ajay Maken said was, the booklet was “not just being translated and distributed in Hindi but also in all regional languages by the PCCs”.
“We’re not going to be silent bystanders in the farce that is being enacted,” he added. Well ‘silence’ on crucial issues, it has been said, was what had cost the UPA Government dear, now down to 44 in Lok Sabha and two states gone out its hands, the Congress seemed to be trying to make amends by ‘being an active alert Opposition’. So citing legislations and policy issues, Maken said, whether ‘it is the Insurance Bill or the Civil Nuclear Liability Act or the Land Boundary Agreement with Bangladesh, the BJP had opposed the UPA Government on all these in Parliament’ but are now proposing to pass the same bills and expecting support.
At least 25 U-turns the government has taken since it came to power six months ago, Maken said, including the 22 that the booklet has listed.
The latest somersault, Maken claimed, was on the ‘classified’ documents relating to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. “Then BJP president, now Home Minister, Rajnathji (Singh) had in Cuttack had demanded that the papers be made public. Harangued our government on the issue, but now, (in government) he is reiterating the same stand,” Maken quipped. But topping of list of items on which the Congress claimed the BJP/NDA government was changing colours was the issue of black money, relation with Pakistan, Article 370, and border incursions. Quite surprisingly, the Congress also reeled out the BJP’s volte face on the NCP, its former UPA partner, from which the ruling dispensation took support to win a vote of confidence in Maharashtra Assembly. This after having labelled the NCP as the most ‘corrupt party’ during the state poll campaign.
This is kind of sharp attack on the newly elected government is not very unusual, is how the BJP reacted. Faced with the pincer attack, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiah Naidu himself addressed the media.
After the Government completed 100 days, the party did a similar exercise to lambast the PM not sticking to his promises.