Senior BJP leader M Venkaiah Naidu on Wednesday denied differences of opinion among the party’s top leadership on its prime ministerial candidate for the next Lok Sabha elections.
He blamed the Congress and the media for portraying as though there were conflicting opinions in the party. “There are no differences of opinion. The decision on who should be the prime ministerial candidate would be taken by the party’s central Parliamentary Board”, he said.
Addressing a press conference here, Venkaiah Naidu said if there was any difference of opinion, it was in the Congress, not the BJP. “It is an open secret that there are two power centres, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi, in the Congress which has divided the party,” he said, adding that senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh had openly admitted there were two power centres in the party.
“Let the Congress set its house in order first and then, comment about others. The government led by it is full of scams and has become the byword for inefficiency,” he remarked.
The BJP is capable of taking a decision on the issue of prime ministerial candidate and it will be done at the appropriate time, he said. Commenting on party patriarch LK Advani’s remarks on Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi at the Gwalior meeting, he said the media was reading too much into it. “Advani has not said anything unusual or tried to show Modi in a poor light. Advani has been praising the works being done by the BJP-ruled chief ministers. He even praised Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh and other BJP chief ministers. In the same breath, Advani praised Shivraj Singh Chouhan”, he said and wondered if a section of Congress leaders had special liking for Modi. “That is why they keep talking about him,” he quipped.
The Congress-led UPA government’s popularity is going down and to save the image, it is trying to spread rumours that there are differences among leaders in the BJP, he alleged, adding that the BJP was bound to return to power in 2014.
Commenting on the Food Security and Land Acquisition Bills, Naidu said both had been pending for the last nine years. Now as the general elections are round the corner and the popularity of the UPA government is on the wane, it is trying to pass the bills, he opined. He said the government was trying to blame the BJP for not passing both the bills during the budget session. “But the fact is that the government is not interested in passing both the bills and is trying to bring the laws through an ordinance, which the BJP will not allow,” he said.
The government showed a lot of interest in passing the Nuclear and FDI Bills, which were against national interest and delayed the Food Security Bill and Land Acquisition Bill which are in the interest of the people, he alleged.
BJP National Executive
The three-day BJP National Executive meeting will be held from June 7 in Goa. On June 7, national level office bearers’ meet will be held, on June 8 and 9 national executive will meet. It will discuss party strategy for the forthcoming Assembly elections in Madya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Delhi, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. Apart from this, UPA’s failures will also be discussed.
