The Hindu : Kerala News : Liberate Kerala from LDF, UDF: Venkaiah

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Apr 26, 2004

Kerala

Kerala

Liberate Kerala from LDF, UDF: Venkaiah

By Our Special Correspondent

KOCHI, APRIL 25. The BJP president, M. Venkaiah Naidu, feels it is time for the UDF and the LDF to move over and the NDA to take over.

"It's time to liberate the State from the UDF and the LDF. They have ruled and ruined Kerala. The NDA is coming and the voters should decide whether they want to be a part of development or to keep away from development," Mr. Naidu said.

Harping on the theme of development, he asked, "Do you want development to continue or to set roadblocks to development?"

Mr. Naidu was speaking after handing party membership to a dozen Christians in the city, representatives of some 250 Christian families waiting to join the BJP, here on Sunday. Mr. Naidu, on a tour of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, had stopped over in the city for half an hour to welcome the new entrants.

He ridiculed the electoral `understanding' between the Congress and the Left parties saying that they were hand-in-hand at one place but at each other's throats elsewhere.

"It is `kusthi' (fighting) in Thiruvananthapuram, but `dosti' (friendship) in New Delhi between the Congress and the Communists," he commented.

Pointing to the Antony-Karunakaran rivalry in the Congress, Mr. Naidu said their open fights had become `vulgar' and predicted that the fights would resume after the elections were over.

He alleged that Mr. Karunakaran was only concerned about his daughter and son while Mr. Antony was concerned about his `chair.'

Listing the achievements of the BJP-led Government, he said the country had developed by "leaps and bounds". The past five years had been an era of `connectivity'— of air connectivity, highway connectivity and of Internet connectivity. During the Congress rule, there had been queues all over the country for goods ranging from essential commodities to building materials. Now, there were no queues as sufficient goods were available.

"Earlier, there were imports, now there are exports." India used to take loans from global agencies earlier, now the country was paying back loans in advance and was even offering loans to other countries.

Mr. Naidu was confident that Mr. Vajpayee would be sworn in on May 15 as the Prime Minister again.

The ongoing election was a `unique' one, he said, because its outcome was already known. Both the winner and the loser were known even before the elections were over, he claimed.

He termed today's function, where Christians had been given membership in the BJP, as a momentous one which the party had long been looking forward to. It showed that minorities were streaming into the party.

He said the BJP did not distinguish between religions and did not believe in theocracy.

The Congress and the Left were distorting secularism. They were creating a majority-minority divide and also creating suspicion in the minds of the minorities, he alleged.

The BJP State president, P.S. Sreedharan Pillai, said that some 300 Christian families, from many denominations, would join the BJP. He also said by the time the Chief Minister, A.K. Antony's campaign tour arrived in the city, some Congressmen too would join the party.

The BJP State secretary, A.N. Radhakrishnan, said the "inflow" of minorities' into the BJP showed that Kerala was changing too, along with the rest of the country.

Mathew Pylee, president, BJP Minority Morcha, said that when he had joined the party seven years ago, he had been ridiculed. But now many members of the minority communities were joining the BJP.

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