PM, Sonia taking secularism to suicidal path of subversion: Jaitley

New Delhi, Sep 23 (UNI) The BJP today accused Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi of dumping nationalism by taking 'secularism to the suicidal path of subversion' and asserted that they now had secured near monopoly of articulating the cause of nationalism in the country's polity.

Addressing a meeting of BJP Intellectual Cell, BJP General Secretary Arun Jaitley said riding to power on the waves of nationalism, the Congress, during the Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi era, was treading a middle path of balancing nationalism without giving an impression to the nation that it was wooing the votes of the minorities. Ms Indira, at times, even played the nationalism card more aggressively than that of BJP or its predecessor Jana Sangh, he said.

Making a detailed analysis of terrorism, its manifestation and its handling by the Government, Mr Jaitley said the Congress till recently had not 'jettisoned' nationalism like the Muslim League and Communist parties. ''We may have differed ideologically with the Congress but they had never abandoned nationalism. However, after seeing the way the UPA Government is handling terror, the BJP now has the total political space of nationalism,'' Mr Jaitley claimed.

Repeating his allegation that Centre was pursuing 'soft on terror' policy, he said, ''Bangladesh may be responsible for many sleeper cells through infiltration, but the biggest sleeper cell is in North Block, sleeping all times doing nothing against terror.'' The BJP leader said a new phenomenon in terror had emerged in the recent days where the problem could no longer be termed as 'cross border terror' because the operators had changed their modus.

The terror participants were no longer recruited from 'victims of state oppression' but were chosen educated youth from reasonably affluent classes' as seen in the recent wave of arrests.

He said the other phenomenon was that those terror groups not only had their underground networks but a numerous 'donor driven' over the ground Human Rights organisations, taking up the cause of terrorists, painting Indian Army and Police forces in bad light.

''These forces would not hesitate to eqaualise terrorist and secessionist organisations donning AK-47 and carrying out RDX explosions in the country with agressive rabble organisations but with no arms or ammunitions. If only some research were to be done about funds received by these organisations, it would not be difficult to unravel the motives behind these organisations posing as Human Rights organisations,'' he said.

He also clarified that his party was not against innocents being framed but at the same time no terrorists should be spared.

Prakash Singh, former Director General of the Border Security Force, said terrorists over the years had become more dangerous and were capable of inflicting higher damage and fatalities. He wanted a broad consensus among the political parties on dealing with issues like territorial integrity, national security, terrorism, where no party do anything to weaken the national spirit while they were free to fight among themselves on all other matters.

BJP General Secretary Vijay Goel found it strange that the UPA was arguing that terrorists did strike when POTA was in force. ''So many murders are taking place in the country in violation of IPC 302. Will you repeal the murder provision from the statute books?'' he asked.

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