Gadkari dubs NCP ''anti-National Congress party''

Mumbai, Oct 09 (UNI) Maharashtra BJP president Nitin Gadkari today criticised Nationalist Congress Party general secretary Tariq Anwar for seeking clemency for Parliament terror attack convict Mohammed Afzal.

Talking to reporters, the BJP leader said another NCP's general secretary and lawyer of several bomb blast accused, Majid Memon, had earlier opposed recital of Vande Mataram by the Muslims.

Against the backdrop of these two statements, Mr Gadkari said, NCP should be renamed ''anti-National Congress Party''. ''if this trend continued he would not be surprised if Dawood Ibrahim, the prime absconding accused in India's worst terror attack in Mumbai in 1993, was made treasurer of the NCP,''he quipped.

He said it seems that there is no coordination between NCP leaders as their party supremo and Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar had said that Mr Anwar's statement was not the stand of the party.

On farmers' suicides, Mr Gadkari said soon a delegation of BJP leaders from Maharashtra would call on President Dr Abdul Kalam to focus on their plight.

He charged the wrong economic policies of the Congress-NCP government as being responsible for the suicides and cited the case of a Narkhed farmer who committed suicide today in front of Vidhan Bhavan building at Nagpur.

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