With Narendra Modi on one side, voting the ruling alliance back to power for a third term is a necessity for the Indian voter, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy has said.
The Congress alone would be able to keep the nation ‘unified and as one,’ he said at a function organised to mark the conclusion of the 12-day Vikasana Sandesa Yathra, led y M.K. Raghavan, MP, here on Sunday.
“The Congress-led UPA is now the nation’s necessity because what is arrayed on the opposite side is Narendra Modi and the BJP. Can Narendra Modi uphold the age-old traditions of the nation? It is only the Congress which can keep India unified,” Mr. Chandy said.
There was no third choice in Indian politics for the voter. “That is a fact. Even those who blindly criticised the Congress have now come to terms with the UPA’s achievements in the past 10 years,” Mr. Chandy said.
The function saw Socialist Janata (Democratic) [SJ-D] president M.P. Veerendra Kumar and Communist Marxist Party leader C.P. John share the dais with IUML leader and Social Welfare Minister M.K. Muneer and Excise Minister K. Babu, along with other Congress leaders.
“There will be a lot to criticise and lot has been alleged, but the voter has to acknowledge that it was the UPA which changed the rural landscape of India with laws such as Right to Food, Right to Education, and the Right to Information,” the Chief Minister said. The third UPA government, on coming to power, would go ahead with implementing the health security scheme, he said. The repeated failures of protest programmes of the Left Democratic Front (LDF) had exposed its weaknesses, he said. “They have so far not been able to even disrupt one day’s work of the government,” Mr. Chandy said. “I have to say the Marxist party has moved away from the people. I am not saying they do not have the influence to gather people for a protest march or an agitation. But, fewer people believe in them now,” he said.
