The proposed Federal Front would not be an alternative to the BJP-led NDA at the Centre, BJP senior leader M Venkaiah Naidu has said.
Speaking to reporters here on Thursday, the BJP leader said: “Such experiments at forming a third front in the country have been tried in the past and all of them had failed. NDA is the only alternative.”
The third alternatives in the past suffered from lack of able leadership and failed to deliver the goods. “People will not accept those regional parties which supported the Congress earlier and those which are still supporting it as an alternative to Congress,” Venkaiah Naidu added.
“Parties supporting the Congress or in alliance with it are responsible for the sins committed by the Congress-led UPA and can never become a real alternative. BJP has the credible record of good governance and development in the states where it ruled. People always remember the good track record when Vajpayee-led NDA was in power at the Centre,” he said. “People are of the opinion that sooner the UPA goes, the better,” he added.
On the internal crisis in BJP after the resignation of senior leader LK Advani, Venkaiah Naidu said: “We are capable of sorting out issues among ourselves and we are a strong democratic party.”
“Though Advani’s resignation is painful, it is only a one-day affair and the story ended on a happy note,” Venkaiah Naidu said. He pointed out that Advani did not resign from the party or as a leader of NDA. Naidu termed Modi as an able leader and said 23 to 30 percent of minorities voted in favour Modi in Assembly elections and 35 to 60 percent of minorities supported him in local body polls.
Naidu further said that the Congress was rattled with the announcement of Narendra Modi as the head of the campaign committee of the BJP. Their hope of divisions in the BJP had no basis and by so believing they (Congress) were living in a fool’s paradise, he said.
“The Congress is in utter despair and it wanted to divert the attention of people form their massive failures on all fronts, including economy, internal security, external relations, corruption, price rise and bringing back the black money stashed away in other countries,” he added.
“Whenever the Congress faced a crisis, it harps on secularism versus communalism,” Venkaiah Naidu said.
Naidu appealed to the leaders of NDA partner JD(U) not to make any derogatory remarks against Narendra Modi.
“It will help neither them nor the country. You will only be making our opponents happy. Please follow the coalition dharma,” Venkaiah Naidu told JD(U) leaders.