UP polls are challenge, opportunity for BJP: Advani

Lucknow, Dec 24 (UNI) Senior BJP leader L K Advani today called upon the party cadre to get ready to oust the UPA government and said the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls are the first challenge as well as the first opportunity before the party.

In his concluding address at the three-day National Party Executive and National Council here, Mr Advani underlined the importance of the coming assembly polls as UP was where the BJP derived its real strength in its march to power at the Centre. '' .....And UP is where the BJP will bounce back,'' he said.

Exhorting the party workers to take up the UP polls with a positive mind frame, he said ''Let us enter the electoral fray by conveying to the people of Uttar Pradesh that the BJP is the only alternative to the politics of criminalisation, casteism and chaos.'' He said out of four erstwhile backward BIMARU states, UP alone was inflicted with 'Bimari (ailment)' of backwardness.

''Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and even Bihar are now on a growth path and can no longer be bracketed with UP,'' he pointed out.

Emphasising the need to capture UP before regaining the power at the Centre after dethroning UPA, the senior BJP leader said the stability of the UPA government was just a mirage as the ground was slipping under the government's feet.

''The popular resentment against the government is fast rising on account of the betrayal of most of the promises that the Congress had given before the elections. The Aam Aadmi (Common Man) is feeling cheated due to the unprecendented hike in prices of essential commodities and services,''he said.

Describing the incidents of distressed farmers' suicides as a matter of national shame, Mr Advani said that the discontent among the farmers had never been as sharp and widespread as at present.

Lambasting UPA for inner contradictions, he said UPA had proved to be not an alliance with a common positive purpose but simply an opportunistic arrangement to keep the BJP out. ''Never in the history of independent India has a section of the ruling coalition-communist parties in this case-given a Bandh call in protest against the 'anti-poor', 'anti-kisan',' anti-workers' policies of its own government,'' he said.

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