The Bharatiya Janata Party, which is yet to release its election manifesto, on Friday charged the Congress-led UPA government with compromising the dignity and integrity of the Prime Minister’s Office, destruction of the economy, presiding over scams and corruption, and undermining national security, among others.
Releasing a 68-page “charge sheet”, the BJP listed foreign policy failure, neglect of the Northeast, failure in education and healthcare and undermining institutions like the CAG as other areas where the UPA had fallen short.
Training his guns on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, senior BJP leader and the head of the “charge sheet” committee Ravi Shankar Prasad said: “Dr. Singh acted as a chief executive officer of a board, of which Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi had a controlling interest.”
“This government is a failure on all fronts. The legacy of the UPA is that it has left India suffering, insecure and distressed...this has been the most corrupt government since Independence” Mr. Prasad said.
Attacking the government for failing to contain the Maoist problem, Mr. Prasad said even though Dr. Singh had described Left wing extremists as the biggest security threat to the country, the government’s response has not been commensurate with the gravity and magnitude of the threat. “Soft faces of Maoist-Leftists extremist violence have a pride of place in Sonia Gandhi’s National Advisory Council,” he said.
The rupee had been devalued, prices were rising, unemployment had gone up and infrastructure was crippled.
On poverty, the BJP said: “The government could not even decide as to who really constitute the poor. The government filed a shameful affidavit in the court that those who earn Rs. 26 a day in rural areas and Rs. 32 a day in urban areas only are poor,” Mr. Prasad said.
Among the “major scams” amounting to more than Rs. 10,000 crore, the “charge sheet” listed the 2G spectrum, Commonwealth Games and Coalgate among others.
“In the past two years, more than 500 incidents of border violations by Chinese troops have been reported. The UPA government failed to correctly assess the military implications of these developments and take steps to shore up India’s defences,” Mr. Prasad said.
The document also listed delinking of terror from the dialogue with Pakistan as the biggest foreign policy failure.
