Is Karat's flip-flop to facilitate nuclear deal?

New Delhi, Dec 15: Taking pot shots at CPI-M General Secretary Prakash Karat for his ''flip-flop on Indo-US nuclear deal'', the BJP today said the party was probably preparing the ground for accepting the deal by such comments.

BJP spokesman Ravishankar Prasad said that the world had seen and heard Mr Karat saying that the political parties should be prepared to face Lok Sabha elections if the UPA Government were to go ahead with the talks with International Atomic Energy Agency beyond 2007. ''Now that we hear that he had denied having said this one can only deduce that the CPI-M is afraid of the BJP and the NDA staging a comeback and the recent flip flop is aimed at stalling this by prolonging the longevity of the tottering UPA government,'' he said.

He said the BJP was supremely confident that it would come back to power in Gujarat notwithstanding the vicious hate campaign of the Congress and the UPA parties against Chief Minister Narendra Modi and the party. The BJP leaders had addressed 500 public rallies touching all the 182 assembly constituencies.

The party was focussing only on development and terrorism but the Congress and the UPA parties had made it vicious by raising the unwarranted 'merchant of death' controversy, he said.

UNI