Tarnished by a string of financial scandals, including the 2G spectrum scam, and weakened by the leak of the Radia tapes, the Congress has decided to go on the offensive against the Opposition, particularly the Bharatiya Janata Party, in the coming weeks and months.
Senior Congress sources indicated that party president Sonia Gandhi will spell out the party's action plan at the plenary session in Burari this weekend to “counter and expose” the Opposition, which has plans to hold nationwide agitations on the issue of corruption.
Ms. Gandhi set the mood for the counter-attack on Monday itself at a meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Party on the closing day of the winter session. From the day the BJP lost power in 2004, she stressed, it had been obstructing Parliament, making it very hard for the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) to conduct even essential government business; the people of India would, therefore, be entirely justified if they took “a dim view” of the manner in which the Opposition, especially the principal Opposition party, had disrupted the just concluded session of Parliament.
Simultaneously, Ms. Gandhi cited several instances of corruption by BJP and NDA leaders that had gone unpunished by the party. “I would urge all our party workers,” she said, “to explain to the people all these facts and expose the Opposition's double standards and double-speak, particularly that of the BJP.”
Meanwhile, Congress media chairperson Janardan Dwivedi on Tuesday told journalists: “The Congress is ready for every challenge and will go to the people more actively in the coming days and expose the motive and the intention of the Opposition.”
Accusing the Opposition of trying to create an impression that there was some distance between the Congress and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Mr. Dwivedi said: “There can be no bigger lie than this. The kind of understanding that exists between the Prime Minister and the Congress president today was neither before, nor will perhaps be in future. There can be no better coordination between the Congress president and the Prime Minister as it exists today.”
Taking a swipe at the BJP, he said: “In contrast, the NDA should reflect on what relationship existed between their Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister.”
He also referred to Ms. Gandhi's speech on Monday, in which she said the party stood solidly behind the Prime Minister.
The Opposition, Mr. Dwivedi said, was raising the bogey of corruption as it was running out of patience after its second consecutive defeat in the Lok Sabha elections of 2009.
“It seems that the Opposition, especially the BJP, is finding it hard to wait another four years, and the leaders of the Opposition are themselves not sure about their position in future,” he said.
However, they should not inflict their “internal problems” on the country, he added.
