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Campaigning reaches feverish pitch

By Our Staff Correspondent

BHOPAL NOV. 26. With D-day approaching for the Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections, electioneering has reached a feverish pitch in the State as the two main political parties--the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress--are gunning for each other with one of them blaming the ruling Congress of pushing the State to the brink of disaster and the other accusing the BJP-led Central Government of failure on all fronts.

The Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who addressed election rallies at Rewa and Gwalior yesterday, accused the Digvijay Singh Government of utter failure to provide a proper network of roads in the State and doing nothing to ease the prevailing electricity crisis. Without naming the senior Congress leader Arjun Singh, who has recently been apologising for the electricity crisis in his elections speeches, the Prime Minister told the Madhya Pradesh voters that the apology comes too late in the day and it is now time for the Congress to abdicate power. The Prime Minister had maintained the same thrust at his public meetings held at Jabalpur and Indore last week.

The Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, is also in a belligerent mood and continues to remain unruffled by the BJP onslaught. After a series of election rallies at places like Sanawad, Itarsi, and Khurvai last week, Ms. Gandhi once more stood in defence of the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, Digvijay Singh, at her Morena rally yesterday and praised the State Government's performance -- particularly the steps taken during the last ten years to ensure social justice, build the social infrastructure, and empower women and weaker sections.

In her speech at Morena, Ms. Gandhi also targeted the Vajpayee Government describing it as the "most corrupt". In terms of corruption, it has created a record that can never be broken, she asserted.

Ms. Gandhi's rallies and speeches notwithstanding, the Congress campaign has continued to revolve mainly around the Chief Minister. Even the Congress propaganda in the form of advertisements and television commercials keeps zooming in on the Chief Minister's "larger than life image" describing him as "more capable" than the BJP's chief ministerial candidate, Uma Bharti.

The election speeches of the BJP leaders campaigning in Madhya Pradesh have been loaded with full-throated criticism of the Digvijay Singh Government. From the BJP side, the Union Minister, Arun Jaitley, has been relentlessly questioning Mr. Digvijay Singh's level of understanding when it comes to the basic principles of economics that govern the process of development.

Despite the Congress strategy to question the performance of the BJP-led Central Government, development remains the main election issue this time. When the ruling Congress is confronted with the anti-incumbency factor and large number of voters in different parts of the State, stretching from the Malwa region in the West to Baghelkhand area in the East and the Gwalior-Bhind-Morena region in the North to Bhopal-Raisen-Hoshangabad area in Central Madhya Pradesh, are openly expressing the general mood for change, other factors including the presence of Bahujan Samaj Party, Samajwadi Party and Nationalist Congress Party or the large number of rebel candidates in the poll fray, more or less, have been negated.

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