Author: PTI
Publication: The Newspaper Today
Date: September 1, 2002
The BJP on Saturday demanded an
explanation from Congress president Sonia Gandhi on what made separatist
Kashmiri leader Shabbir Shah retract his statement on participating in
the coming Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections after meeting her on Friday.
"We demand an explanation from Gandhi
about what advice she offered to Shah of the Democratic Freedom Party which
resulted in the sudden reversing of his stand and refusing to participate
in the elections," party spokesman Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said.
"Congress owed an explanation to
the people of India and should make public the details of the discussion
the party president had with Shah which made him reverse his stand as it
was a sensitive issue of national importance," he said.
Naqvi hit out at the Congress for
adopting "double standards" in objecting to the BJP Mahila Morcha demonstrating
outside Gandhi's residence against the murder of a Congress corporator
by another colleague while it had demonstrated outside the residence of
a Cabinet minister merely on the basis of an accusation made by the spouse
of a police official wanted in a murder case.
Naqvi took strong exception to the
criticism of the government by Gandhi on the issue of welfare of SC and
STs saying that "Gandhi should not forget that the Congress had ruled at
the Centre and states for 47 years and yet the condition of those belonging
to SC and ST is miserable."
"The Congress president also seems
to have developed selective amnesia with regard to five important office
memoranda that were issued during united front's regime supported by the
Congress party which withdrew many facilities for deserving people belonging
to sc and st. It was the nda government which restored the memoranda,"
he said.
Naqvi said Gandhi's statement has
not only exposed the ignorance about the past performance of her party's
successive governments but also displayed her "scant knowledge" on the
important achievements of the present NDA government.
