The Hindu : BJP holds `victory rally'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Dec 16, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Andhra Pradesh-Hyderabad

BJP holds `victory rally'

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD Dec. 15. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) organised a victory rally at the RTC Crossroads here on Sunday to celebrate its impressive performance in the Gujarat Assembly elections.

Party followers burst crackers and distributed sweets to passersby to mark the occasion holding up traffic at the busy intersection for some time.

Addressing the crowd, Union Minister of State for Railways, Bandaru Dattatreya, said the Gujarat result was a victory for nationalist forces and a resounding slap for Pakistan's ISI which had been fomenting trouble in the State. He lashed out at the Congress, the Left and the Samajwadi Party for what he called a `poisonous and vicious campaign' in India and abroad against the BJP and Narendra Modi. The media, television channels in particular, also failed to grasp the public mood in Gujarat.

Exhorting all political parties to see the reality, he said it was high time the Congress stopped treating Muslims as a vote bank and strives to bring them into the political mainstream. He said the Congress which had been asking for a ban on VHP and Bajrang Dal now found itself `banned' by the people of Gujarat. The BJP State president, Chilakam Ramachandra Reddy, attributed the two-thirds majority secured by the BJP in Gujarat to Prime Minister Vajpayee's policies. He said the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, and the Left leaders utterly failed in their attempt to paint the BJP as a communal party.

The City party chief, C. Ramachandra Reddy, said the massive margins of victory secured by the BJP in Mr. Modi's constituency and in Godhra reflected the pro-BJP mood in Gujarat. The BJP general secretary, K. Lakshman, and the party MLA, Prem Singh Rathore, were also present.

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