Senior BJP leader and former party chief M Venkaiah Naidu on Tuesday said that the Congress does not have an answer to his party’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi as it does not have any such candidate for the 2014 parliamentary polls.
“The Congress does not even have chief ministerial candidates for Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. You (Congress) gave Ajit Jogi so much of importance. Now tell us the name of your chief ministerial nominees,” he said at a Press conference here. “The Congress is also rattled with the BJP’s declaration of Narendra Modi as the PM candidate. They (Congress) are not able to face him politically, ideologically nor it has an agenda for development. That’s why the Congress has started the game of mudslinging and indulging in name calling,” Naidu said.
He said that the Congress had pressed 10 of its Union Ministers into service and hired many professionals to unleash disinformation campaign against Narendra Modi. “We (BJP) want to fight the election on a developmental agenda and our performance while the Congress wants to divert the attention of the people from development,” Naidu said.
“The Congress president called Narendra Modi as Mout ka Saudagar. The Congress general secretary calls him ‘megalomaniac psychopath liar’. One Congress spokesperson calls him Yamadharma Raja and another dubs him Ravana. It is Narendra Modi, a leader who has won Assembly polls in Gujarat thrice in a row who is also the most popular leader in the country,” he said.
“Are the facists forgetting the fact that it was their party and leaders who murdered democracy, imposed emergency, imprisoned lakhs of people, introduced censorship and crippled fundamental rights,” Naidu said. “Even on the political front, the Congress does not know how to run a coalition Government. They don’t have leadership and the country is suffering with policy paralysis. That’s why people wanting for a change and waiting for an earliest opportunity to throw the Congress Government out,” he said.
The Congress has weakened the federal polity, shown discrimination against the non Congress Government, weakened and denigrated every institution including the Election Commission, CAG, CVC and the Human Rights Commission, the BJP MP further said. “Courtesy the CBI, the Congress is still in power otherwise it would have lost majority long back. The CBI is being misused to keep its allies under control, win over the neutrals, defame opponents, destabilise the Opposition Governments and dilute the corruption cases against the ruling party. In the process some of these institutions lost their credibility,” Naidu said.
On Assembly polls in Chhattisgarh, the BJP MP remarked: “The BJP is confident of winning the semi-final in four out of five States and will also be victorious in the General elections of 2014.” In the first phase of Chhattisgarh Assembly polls, it was clear that the ballot proved heavy over bullet. The solution of the Naxal problem lies in the ballot. You cannot get ‘ballot through bullet’. After so much violence, it was democracy which won in Bastar, he said.
Also present at the Press conference was Bollywood actress and noted danseuse ‘dream girl’ Hema Malini.