Advani says tenuous UPA will fall, snap polls likely

Umreth, Gujarat, Apr 7 (UNI) Senior BJP leader L K Advani today asked party workers to be ready for mid-term parliamentary polls, saying the UPA government was just managing to survive through sheer cunning and some clever political manoeuvring.

Addressing roadside meetings on the second day of his Bharat Suraksha Yatra near the dairy town of Anand, he said he was sure that people would express their anguish and anger against the non-performing UPA government whenever elections are held.

Devising a simile, he said under normal circumstances it is a driver who has control over the steering, accelerator and the brakes of a vehicle, but in the case of the UPA, it was Congress chief Sonia Gandhi who had control over the steering, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh over the accelerator and the CPI(M), though not a participant in the government, was controlling the brakes.

''We don't know where these drivers are taking the country's destiny,'' he said.

Mr Advani said this kind of ''strange arrangement'' would not last long and so the BJP had to prepare for mid-term polls.

Addressing a series of meetings in Dakor, Kamboj and Sarsa, en route to Vadodara, the former BJP president drew the attention of curious villagers towards the dangers posed by terrorists and anti-national elements based in Bangladesh, which, he said, was abetting and harbouring these forces inimical to India.

''Our borders are not safe. Our democracy is not safe. There is no security for the common man and the government, riddled with corruption and scams, can never hope to provide a good governance,'' he said.

When the NDA was in power, Mr Advani said, it had ensured that the good steps initiated by Dr Singh as Finance Minister were acknowledged and continued as a matter of policy, but it was not reciprocated now that Dr Singh had himself become the Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister could not afford to annoy the ''powers that be'' by such reciprocal gestures, he added.

The BJP veteran, pointing to the ''dangers of the Congress-Communist combine'', reminded the audience about the Kerala Assembly passing a unanimous resolution seeking parole for the alleged kingpin of the Coimbatore bomb blasts which had claimed more that 80 lives.

Mr Advani, who was accompanied by Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, party general secretary Ananth Kumar and state BJP president Vajubhai Vala, is scheduled to address a meeting in Vadodara later tonight.

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