BJP lashes out at Centre

By OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

New Delhi, May 14: Former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and NDA’s prime ministerial candidate L.K. Advani on Wednesday condemned the serial blasts in Jaipur on Tuesday. While Mr Vajpayee declared that it was part of the terrorists’ design to spread unrest in the country, Mr Advani saw votebank politics behind the government not cracking down on terrorism. BJP general secretary Arun Jaitley demanded a strong legal regime to deal with terror. BJP president Rajnath Singh also raised the issue of terrorism during his meeting with Pakistan People’s Party vice-president Makhdoom Amin Fahim in the backdrop of Tuesday’s blasts. Mr Fahim said that as far as terrorism was concerned, he and his party were also against of all kinds of terrorism anywhere in the world.

Mr Advani said, "I would like to emphasise that the fight against terrorism is a national issue and the role and responsibility of the Central government in dealing with this menace is much more than that of any state government. The UPA government, which will shortly complete four years in office, has such a dismal record in discharging this responsibility that it instils no confidence whatsoever. In these four years, the UPA government has failed to investigate, prosecute and punish the guilty in any of the numerous terrorist attacks that have taken place in different parts of the country."

Blaming this failure on the fear of losing its votebank, he said, evidently, terrorist outfits have come to believe that they have nothing to fear so long as the UPA government is in office at the Centre. Guided by the same votebank considerations, the UPA government repealed Pota soon after assuming office in May 2004. What is worse, the Congress and its allies took "perverse pride" in having "disarmed the law enforcement agencies of the most potent legislative weapon they had in combating terrorist outfits", he said.