Jaitley says vote bank politics had led to rise in terror in country

New Delhi, Nov 27 (UNI) Senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley today launched a frontal attack on the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, charging it with failing to tackle terrorism, indulging in vote bank politics and being reduced to having to accomodate an accused in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case in its council of ministers.

He made the charges during the short duration discussion in the Rajya Sabha on the internal security scenario in the country. Cries of protest from the treasury bench greeted his statement with Congress (I) chief whip V Narayanasamy and MP Rajiv Shukla rising to their feet. In the resulting din, little could be understood for some time.

Resuming after order was restored, Mr Jaitley said that in the past two years, the government had been unable to fulfill the public aspirations fully. There had been criminalisation of ministers, the Prime Minister's dignity had been lowered and the prestige of foreign policy had been affected, he said.

He charged that since the the UPA government look over, terror had gone up, vital installations were attacked and attacks carried out in Mumbai, Ayodhya, Varanasi, Bangalore and Nagpur.

''Internal Security is not the priority of this government,'' Mr Jaitley said.

Blaming ''vote bank politics'' for the state of affairs, the BJP leader said the government was trying to save the perpetrators of the terror attacks such as Afzal Guru.

In this context, he said the matter of the December 13 attack on Parliament was aimed at ''annihilating virtually the entire political leadership of the country.'' Mr Jaitley drew the members' attention to the rise of left-wing exremism or Maoism involving 40 per cent of the country's geographical area and one-third of its population.

''The most dangerous trend is that it is a geographically compact area and with high level of miilitarisation which can face the best of security forces,'' he said. These underground groups were levying taxes, running parallel administrations and the rightfully elected governments were reluctant to enter into confrontations, he added.

He termed it as ''the biggest mistake of the government -- that instead of addressing the problem, it was deflecting the solution.'' MORE UNI SD VD GC1618