Advani criticises UPA government over religion based reservation

Bangalore, Nov 19 (UNI) Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani today came down heavily on the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government on the Centre for its meek and weak attitude in dealing with terrorism, a great threat to the country's internal security.

Addressing a mammoth rally at the National Security Pledge Convention here, he said it was a shame the UPA government had soft peddled its attitude towards curbing terrorism in the country.

Most of the political parties in the country including the Congress and Communist had kept an eye on the vote banks and hence their attitude towards taking on terrorism was not effective, he observed saying there should be zero tolerance towards such anti-human activities. Unfortunately the political parties exhibited this absurdity and pseudo secularism keeping in view the vote banks during the elections, he rued.

He believed that terrorism implied a continuous proxy war held in a systematic manner which should be firmly dealt with. But the Manmohan Singh government had announced there would be a joint mechanism by both India and Pakistan to fight terrorism.

Unfortunately Dr Singh had become the first Prime Minister to go on record that even Pakistan had become a victim of terrorism when the whole world was told that the country nurtured terrorism, he remarked.

He referred to capital punishment ordered by the Supreme Court on Afzal Guru in connection with the terrorist attack on Parliament in 2001 and said it was a brazen attack on a symbol of Indian sovereignty and democracy. It was also a murderous attack on the top leadership of the entire Indian political establishment cutting across party lines. Paradoxically, the leaders and MPs of many of the parties that were overtly or covertly supporting the clemency for Afzal were also targets of that attack, he recalled.

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