Dubbing the political parties which were part of Wednesday’s ‘Convention against Communalism and for Unity of People’ a ‘B’ team of the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) charged that they were trying to divert the attention of the people from the ‘misdeeds’ of the Congress and the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.
The former BJP national president, M. Venkaiah Naidu, said whenever the Congress was faced with ‘trouble, imminent defeat, and engulfed in corruption’ they sang their ‘old raga of secularism versus communalism.’
He alleged that since the Congress was unable to compete with the popularity of the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, its ‘B’ team was supplementing the efforts of the ‘A’ team by raising the bogey of communalism.
“It is the vote bank politics of the Congress that has encouraged communal and fundamentalist organisations to grow in strength and throw challenges to the unity and security of the country,” he said.
Mr. Naidu contended that the majority of the parties which were part of the convention had supported or were supporting the Congress regime. He cited the example of the Left parties supporting the UPA-I for five years, and the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party backing it for the past 10 years. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam had been supporting it from within or outside the government all these years. The Nationalist Congress Party had also supported it for the last 10 years.
He charged that it was during the SP’s regime in Uttar Pradesh that the country was witnessing the biggest communal trouble.
Deputy leader of the BJP in the Rajya Sabha Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the quest for the ‘illusionary’ third front was history and the idea had no relevance.
