Jaitely criticises Sonia Gandhi's Chikli speech

Ahmedabad, Dec 1 (UNI) BJP General Secretary Arun Jaitely today criticised Congress President Sonia Gandhi's public speech at a village in Chikli taluka of South Gujarat.

Mr Jaitely told newspersons here after listening to her speech on a TV channel today, ''We are pained at the choice of expression and vocabulary of Sonia Gandhi in hurling political abuses against one of the country's most honest politician.'' He said Ms Gandhi, in her Chikli public meeting, used some words against Gujarat rulers which does not go with her status as a president of a national party.

The BJP leader said the words such as 'Baimaan' and 'Maut ke Saudagar', used by her against the ruling party of Gujarat, were normally used against the terrorists.

Mr Jaitely said ''If it was an extempore speech, we would have given Smt Gandhi a benefit of doubt for poor understanding of Indian languages. However, she read out those expressions from a written text, hence the abuses were pre-planned.'' Criticising the UPA government's handling of terrorism, he said, ''The UPA government at the Centre was soft on terror and the result was their increased activities across the country which we saw in Hyderabad, Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Varanasi, Lucknow and Allahabad.'' The BJP leader said it should not be forgotten that all terrorist attacks occurred during UPA's rule remain unresolved.

The terrorists in the past five years had succeeded elsewhere in the country but failed in Gujarat, he said, alleging that the 'Maut Ke Saudagar' are those who seek to protect Afzal Guru, involved in Parliament attack, from hanging and protecting the accused persons of the Godhra train fire incident through self-serving committees comprising former judges.

UNI