Left tells Vajpayee ideology matters while BJP downplays issue

By Staff
|
Google Oneindia News

New Delhi, June 19 (UNI) The BJP today sought to downplay former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's rare praise for the Left parties' sway over the electorate which the communists attributed to ''governance and ideology, not art or science''.

Meanwhile, ridiculing Mr Vajpayee's reported advice to the BJP to learn from the Left, the Congress said the saffron party should first learn to play the role of a ''constructive opposition''.

Taking the former Prime Minister's observations on the Communist parties' ''art of getting renewal of mandate'' in stride, the Left parties said the key word for the performance was ''land reforms'' that the BJP-ruled states could emulate.

In a positive reaction, leaders of the CPI, CPI(M) and Forward Bloc said the Marxist parties getting re-elected for nearly three decades in West Bengal was ''neither art nor science, but the result of a consistent and relentless struggle for land reforms, development of infrastructure in the rural areas and ending acute scarcity of power.'' The Left's comments came a day after Mr Vajpayee has been quoted as having said,''We may go on repeating 100 times that the NDA government performed well, yet something was lacking.

People praised our work but did not renew our mandate to rule,'' in the party mouthpiece "BJP Today" in its latest issue.

Meanwhile, BJP spokesman Prakash Javadekar dismissed media interpretation of Mr Vajpayee's remarks and said the Left's success in West Bengal was owing to ''some good politics, not backed by good governance'' However, the BJP was willing to learn ''good things'' from everyone, including the Left, he added.

Mr Javadekar said the Left's success was limited only to West Bengal where it has managed to retain power uninterrupted since 1977.

The communists also took the opportunity to ask the UPA, in particular the Congress, to draw lessons from what happened to the NDA in 2004 as the people judged governments on the basis of its performance and fulfillment of commitments and promises.

CPI leaders A B Bardhan and Shamim Faizi said, ''During the last three decades, we have fulfilled our promises in West Bengal.. it is now the model of land reforms in the country... it is power plus and has removed all bottlenecks in the way of building infrastructure..

Kolkata was the first city to introduce Metro and has decongested the traffic flow by building roads, bridges and flyovers.'' CPI(M) veteran and Polit bureau member M K Pandhe ruled out the possibility of the BJP-ruled states being able to ''ape'' the West Bengal model of development, saying that it was ideology that mattered. ''How can the BJP implement land reforms for the have-nots as it represents the upper castes, the business and capitalist classes?" UNI TEAM RR PM2000

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