No early Lok Sabha polls if BJP wins says Advani

Shimla, Dec 17: Senior BJP leader L K Advani today claimed that chances of early Lok Sabha polls will recede if the BJP registered victories in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh assembly elections. Winding up the BJP electioneering by addressing rallies at Jawali and Shimla, he said the party had foreseen early Lok Sabha polls in the country following ''discord'' between the Left parties and the Congress over the nuclear accord.

''However, the chances of early polls will recede, if the BJP recorded victories in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh assembly elections,'' he added. Blasting the UPA Government for ''going soft on terrorism and bartering the security interests of the country to appease the minorities'', Mr Advani said it was sad commentary on the functioning of the government.

Afzal Guru, main accused in attack on Parliament, had not been hanged in spite of death sentence awarded by the court and upheld by the High Court and the Supreme Court, he said.

Attributing the phenomenal growth of the BJP, after being reduced to a party of just two seats in Lok Sabha in 1984, to the Ayodhya temple movement, he said it was national campaign which exposed the ''pseudo- secularism and minoritism'' of the Congress.

Consequently, the BJP became the largest party and provided a clean and responsive government at the Centre for six years, he added. Stressing the need for electing a government which assured ''good governance'', the BJP leader described its government in Gujarat as a model of good governance.

It was a ''corruption free'' government working for welfare of the state and its people, which had led to Gujarat being adjudged as the best governed state in the country, Mr Advani added.

''It is ironical that while the Planning Commission and Rajiv Gandhi Foundation have rated Gujarat Government the best, the Prime Minister, who is also Chairman of Planning Commission, and Sonia Gandhi, heading the Rajiv Foundation, were trying to belittle the achievements of the Modi Government,'' he said.

Hitting out at the CPM for its ''dubious'' rule in Nandigram, he said that it only exposed that to what extent the party could go to grab lands of people.

He alleged that in Nandigram, CPM cadres and not the police were firing on the villagers and scaring them away, and added that ''we had heard about the atrocities perpetrated on people by Communist governments in Russia and China and seen it in Nandigram''.

UNI