Third alternative a failed experiment: Venkaiah

Says Lok Sabha poll campaign revolves around Modi

ON THE OFFENSIVE: BJP leader M. Venkaiah Naidu with the 'charge-sheet' of against the UPA-led government at the Centre at the Calicut Press Club in Kozhikode on Friday. Photo: K. Ragesh

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader M. Venkaiah Naidu has said that the Lok Sabha elections are witnessing a U.S. Presidential poll-like campaign where the people, the media, and the political parties are focussed on the issue of leadership.

Addressing a meet-the-press ‘Dilli Chalo’ organised by the Calicut Press Club here on Friday, Mr. Naidu said the entire discussion and campaign revolved round the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi.

“Neither our principal rival, the Congress, nor the so-called third alternative or Federal Front are able to name their prime ministerial candidate. That means they are diffident, and have conceded defeat even before the contest,” he said.

Many challenges

Mr. Naidu said the country faced challenges on all fronts. So, it needed an able leader and a stable government. And Mr. Modi was the answer to this.

“Hotchpotch agreements, hotchpotch alliances, discredited fronts cannot be an alternative. The third alternative is a tried and failed experiment. We had the National Front, United Front, Deve Gowda, I.K. Gujral, V.P. Singh, Chandrashekhar experiments. All of them failed,” he said.

Mr. Naidu said the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) had failed in all spheres. All India Congress Committee president Sonia Gandhi had said that they had fulfilled 90 per cent of their promises, but the fact is that they had not fulfilled even 9 per cent of them,” he said.

Economic ‘woes’

He said the economy had collapsed during the UPA’s government’s rule over the past 10 years. Inflation, rupee devaluation, unfriendly neighbours, policy paralysis, atrocities on women, unemployment, and large-scale corruption were its hallmark.

He said the BJP alone would cross the 250 mark, and the National Development Alliance, in all probability, would reach the figure of 300 in the Lok Sabha polls. The BJP-led alliance would reach the 50 mark out of the 132 seats in south India, and the party would open its account in Kerala.

Mr. Naidu said the party would release its manifesto shortly before the polls so that it would remain fresh in the memory of the voters.

On the approach of the BJP towards Muslims, he said minority communities had gradually realised that the Congress had been taking them for a ride all these years. More than 35 per cent of the Muslims had voted for the BJP in the Gujarat Assembly elections, Mr. Naidu said.