Congress-led UPA government has failed on all fronts: BJP

New Delhi, Feb 12(ANI): Expressing concern over the extent of corruption in a string of recently exposed scams, Bharatiya Janata Party President Nitin Gadkari on Saturday termed the ruling Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government a 'failure'.

Firing a salvo at the government, Gadkari blamed the sharp escalation in prices of essential commodities on the economic policies framed by Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh.

"We have got a very able and knowledgeable economist as our Prime Minister to address issues such as inflation and economic policy. I had hoped that a man of his stature would be able to resolve the grievances in our economic policy. But he failed so miserably in his economics that it would be difficult to give him even 25 marks out of 100," Gadkari said.

"Earlier, I used to say the economic policy of the government has failed, but now it seems that the UPA-2 (India's ruling coalition, United Progressive Alliance) has failed on all fronts. All the promises made by Sonia Gandhi (UPA Chief) on issues such as corruption have proven to be false and shallow," he added.

The Congress-led coalition government has come under intense public and political scrutiny in the past few months for not initiating prompt and stringent measures to quell the financial mismanagement rampant in the system.

The BJP chief also urged the government to set up a timeframe for all investigations into the corruption cases for the sake of 'national interest'.

"I hope that for the sake of national interest, there must be time-bound investigations into the corruption cases. These inquiries go on for years and years which is not right. Every probe must be time-bound. After the investigations are done, the culprits must be brought to book immediately," Gadkari said.

Stressing on the need to prevent recurrences of such colossal financial irregularities, Gadkari said that the perpetrators of the scams must be given 'tough punishments'.

"After the facts are revealed, all those involved in corruption must be given the most stringent punishments. They must be sent to jail so that such cases are not repeated. Nobody should dare perpetrate such scams. This is our demand from the ruling government," Gadkari said. (ANI)