Naidu wants a 'healthy focused' debate

M. Venkaiah Naidu, chief of India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) yesterday charged the principal opposition Congress party of indulging in negative campaigning during the ensuing general elections and lowering the nation's image.

According to Naidu, his party prefers a "healthy focused debate" on issues of national importance. He exhorted the Congress party to have a sector-wise debate to prove the BJP's claim of having provided better governance in the country wrong.

"It is amazing to find the Congress party contracting itself. At one hand they say there is no feel good factor in the country and on the other hand they are trying to take credit for all our achievements by saying all such schemes were initiated during their regime," Naidu told the media at his residence yesterday.

Predicting a comfortable victory for the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the five-phased polls starting late next month, Naidu said that his party is ready to prove it with facts and figures that India is indeed shining under the BJP rule. "I am ready for a debate on BJP's five year rule versus 50 years of the Congress party rule," he added.

Emphasising the need to have a healthy debate, Naidu informed that he has already asked his party's Uttar Pradesh state unit chief Vinay Katiyar not to indulge in personal vilification against the Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi.

"I have asked Katiyar not to speak of individuals but on issues," Naidu said.

Katiyar's uncharitable comments about Sonia's foreign origin have attracted sharp criticism from the Congress party.

Naidu, however, was clear in his assertion that Sonia's foreign origin continues to be one of the poll issues for his party.

"Our demand to bar any one of foreign origin holding any top constitutional post in the country is an issue and not directed against any individual," Naidu clarified, adding that it was very part of their campaigning even in the last general elections held in 1999.

Responding to a question, Naidu said that his party will talk to its other NDA partners to explore whether debarring persons of foreign origin becoming President, Prime Minister or Chief Justice of the country can be included in the NDA manifesto.

He said that depending upon the response, the NDA government may even consider passing a bill to this effect, although he hoped that the issue will get settled once for ever with people's verdict this time.

"We could not bring a bill to this effect in the Parliament since we did not have majority in the Rajya Sabha (the Upper House). That an original Indian should rule India is our conviction. Even Congress party terms our candidates who do not belong to that particular constituency as an outsider. The same logic should apply for those who are not Indian by birth," Naidu said.

Naidu ridiculed Sonia Gandhi for trying to forge alliance with regional parties while criticising them, saying regional parties have emerged stronger because regional aspirations were ignored by the previous Congress regimes under which regional disparities increased.

He denied that the senior BJP leader and the Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani had ever talked against regional parties, blaming media for distortion of his views on the issue.

Advani was quoted as telling voters in one of his rallies that they should vote only for a national party.

Naidu predicted a comfortable victory for the NDA saying the Congress party is virtually non-existent on nearly 200 Lok Sabha seats, mostly in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

He said his party is concentrating on 132 Lok Sabha seats of the south and claimed it is getting very good response. "Our seats will increase this time from Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka while in Kerala we will open our account for the first time. I see a perceptible change in moods of voters towards us in the south," Naidu said.

He further claimed that a wind of change is currently blowing in Karnataka where state assembly polls are being held simultaneously with those for the Lok Sabha. "BJP is surging ahead and will come to power in the state," the BJP chief claimed.