Venkaiah charges Cong with pampering minorities

Panaji, Feb 2: Senior BJP leader Venkaiah Naidu today took strong exception to the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre for its ''sectarian thinking'' to pamper the minorities in form of extending reservations and other benefits against the Constitution.

Interacting with reporters at the Goa BJP headquarters before winding up his two-day mission to tune the workers for campaigning for coming elections, he said, ''Bringing forward sectarian issues such as communal budgeting, reservations and Islamic banking for vote bank politics by the UPA government is just to divert the attention of the public from the burning issues such as combating terrorism, checking price rise, unemployment and maintaining law and order.'' Alleging that the Congress was going the same way as the Muslim League that sought creation of communal constituencies in India, Mr Naidu said the BJP was against pampering any community. ''We stand by our word of justice to all and appeasement to none,'' he said.

The present Congress party, he said, was not the real one. In fact, the Indian National Congress was a 'movement' with top leaders like M N Roy and S C Bose but not a party in the pre-Independent era.

The leaders then failed to pay heed to Mahatma Gandhi's advice of dissolving the Congress while asking the workers to go to villages and press for a common civil code.

Regretting that there was no agreement on any issues within the coalition partners, he censured the Left for creating ''roadblocks'' particularly on issues related to hiking interest on the Employees Provident Fund.

Asked whether the BJP continued to adhere to the Jan Sangh ideology, Mr Naidu said, ''We are a moving, forward-looking party that does its forget our roots.'' The BJP, he said, would go alone in Goa in the coming elections in May. ''We are capable of fighting on our own to get a clear cut majority,'' he added.

He hoped that the party would make a comeback in Punjab, Uttarakhand and Goa and stay ahead of other parties in Uttar Pradesh.

The party selected candidates on the basis of their ''commitment, character, image and winnability,'' and fought on the plank of Congress' failure to provide ''stability and security'' besides facing challenges.

The coming elections would signal upward movement for the BJP as a political force and downfall of the UPA government which, he said, had been bidding time while brooding over its failures.

Earlier, he released a door-to-door campaign brochure of the Goa BJP unit that exposed the failures of the Congress government in Goa.

UNI