BJP blames PM's soft attitude for continued blasts in Asom

New Delhi, Jan 18 (UNI) The Bharatiya Janata Party today said the latest bomb blast in Asom was the result of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's 'soft and ambiguous' handling of extremist attacks on Hindi speaking people and demanded stern measures against the militants.

BJP spokesaman Prakash Javadekar said now that External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee was visiting Myanmar, he should raise the issue of ULFA's presence in that country with the government trial.

The BJP demanded that the Centre act firmly against the ULFA and other militant groups. The party also demanded that like the NDA, the UPA should also ask Bhutan and Myanmar to crack down on miliatnts based on those countries.

The result of the NDA government and Bhutan's crackdown was that the ULFA was incapable of carrying out strikes against India and its interests for quite a long time but the ceasefire decision of the UPA and the Congress government in Asom had allowed their regrouping and their ability to strike at will.

He said the Asom government was holding talks with ULFA which did not care to send people, who could make decisions, for the talks but used the ceasefire to regroup and launch the attack with a renewed vigour. The Asom government did not use the absence of decision makers in talks for stalling the dialogue, Mr Javadekar alleged.

Unless the government launched an all out attack against the extremists taking all the neighbouring countries into confidence, nothing would come out of it and it would only be an empty effort, he added.

UNI