BJP national secretary P. K. Krishnadas said on Monday that Defence Minister A. K. Antony’s statement about possible coalition with the Left after the elections was an admission of the certainty of defeat of the Congress in the Lok Sabha polls.
Addressing a press conference in Thiruvananthapuram, the BJP leader said that it was to be suspected that an understanding between CPI (M) and Congress already existed. That was why the CPI (M) had fielded independents against Congress leaders P. C. Chacko, K. V. Thomas and Anto Antony who were close to Congress president Sonia Gandhi. RSP is already in the UDF camp and CPI was having understanding with Congress in a few States.
Mr. Krishnadas said that if Mr. Antony was politically honest, he should formalise the understanding between his party and the CPI (M) after holding discussions with CPI (M) State secretary Pinarai Vijayan and KPCC president V. M. Sudheeran.
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He said that Mr. Antony doubted Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s patriotism to hide his ineptness as Defence Minister. During his tenure as Minister, two submarines had sunk and two defence chiefs had resigned. It was the political leadership and not the Navy Chief who should have resigned owning responsibility for the accidents.
He noted that the top leaders who led the UPA — Manmohan Singh, Antony, and P. Chidambaram, were not contesting in the elections since they were afraid of defeat. Mr. Antony was being used as mask to hide large scale corruption in administration.He said that the withdrawal of the top leaders of Congress could not be equated to the problems in BJP over choice of constituency for the latter’s top leaders.