"BJP won't repeat the mistake of indulging into 'India Shining'-like campaign"

New Delhi, Oct 5 : BJP's chief ministerial candidate in Delhi, Vijay Kumar Malhotra has said that unlike the Congress, his party would not indulge in media blitzkrieg by giving large advertisements in newspapers and TV channels in the run up to the November Assembly polls in the state, because it had learnt a lesson from the "India Shining" campaign it had unleashed before the 2004 Lok Sabha elections.

The BJP's central leadership had launched the "Indian Shining" campaign that supposedly ran into hundreds of crores of rupees, but fell flat after the Congress emerged victorious, though with a slender margin of seven MPs, and went ahead to form the UPA Government.

Alleging the Sheila Dikshit government of indulging into a media campaign by publishing huge advertisements in national and local dailies at the cost of the public money, Malhotra said his party had "bore the brunt" by losing the 2004 Lok Sabha election even after launching the "India Shining" campaign, "so we will not repeat the mistake".

Addressing his first press conference at his official residence in the Capital after being chosen as the CM candidate, Malhotra, Lok Sabha MP from South Delhi, accused the Congress government of spending the public money by publishing advertisements in order to deviate the voters' mind from its scandals, running into thousands of crores, committed during the past ten years.

"Had the Sheila Dikshit government done a good job all these years, it would not have come across the need to publicise its achievements by publishing advertisements running into several pages of dailies, by spending crores of rupees of public money," he said and added that till now the Delhi Government had spent around Rs 20 crores and "many crores of rupees of the public would be spent in the next few weeks".

"The Delhi CM is adopting tactics to delay the announcement of poll dates, because once the election schedule is announced, she would not be able to publicise her government's deeds," added Malhotra.

The first Chief Executive Councillor (CEC) of Delhi during early 1970s, Malhotra further said that if he was voted to power, he would streamline the civil supplies' Public Distribution System (PDS) by distributing coupons to the poor to enable them to buy essential commodities like sugar, rice, wheat, kerosene, and cereals, from any shop. "In the present Congress government, around 3/4th of the food grains meant to be distributed through PDS, are shifted to the black market. As a result, the poor are not benefited from the scheme", added Malhotra.

Accusing the Congress government of not taking any concrete steps in identifying and sending back the Bangladeshis to their home country, he said if became the next chief minister of Delhi, one of his priorities would be to remove the Bangladeshis from the Capital.

"Currently, there are around 1.5 lakh Bangladeshis in the Capital, but the Congress government has been able to identify only 32,000, and also failed in sending them back to their home country," said Malhotra. By Pankaj Yadav

ANI