BJP gets ready for protest on price rise

Hyderabad, Apr 5: Exhorting the cadre to gear up for country-wide protests against price rise from April 7 to 14, former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President M Venkaiah Naidu today claimed that the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance(UPA) would meet its ''waterloo'' on the price rise issue in the next Lok Sabha elections.

The Congress had lost 10 of the 12 states that went to polls, since the last Lok Sabha elections were held and was clinging on to power only in two small states of Goa and Arunachal Pradesh, he contended, while inaugurating the party's two-day Minority Morcha National Executive meet here. While UPA constituents, including the National Congress Party (NCP) were upset with the Congress for ''violating the coalition dharma'', the Left parties, extending outside support to the Government, were only waiting for ''an opportune time to withdraw support to the Government'', he claimed.

Expressing concern over inflation soaring to seven per cent, the highest in recent times, Mr Naidu asked the party activists to corner the UPA Government, which had failed to control the sky-rocketing prices.

''It is ironical that the policies of the UPA Government, headed by an economist, supported by another economist as the Finance Minister and one more economist as the Planning Commission Deputy Chairman, had miserably failed to do minimum that was necessary to keep the common man's life comfortable.'' The UPA Government had slapped an ''unlegislated tax on Aam Aadmi'', betraying the common man, he alleged.

UNI