The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : Unemployment major election plank for BJP: Tathagatha Roy

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jan 06, 2006

Kerala

Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

Unemployment major election plank for BJP: Tathagatha Roy

Staff Reporter

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The West Bengal Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will use unemployment and `infiltration from Bangladesh' and the resulting demographic transformations as the major campaign issues in the Assembly elections to be held this year in the State, said president of the West Bengal unit of the BJP Tathagatha Roy at a meeting organised by the party's district unit here on Thursday to discuss the political situation in West Bengal.

The CPI(M) led front facing its seventh Assembly elections could come back to power this time also but the BJP was working hard to make its presence felt in the Assembly.

"We hope to dislodge the CPI(M) from power in the State during the 2011 Assembly elections," Mr. Roy said.

One reason why the CPI(M) had been able to remain in power so long in West Bengal was that the party was able to politicise the State's bureaucracy, including the police force, and make it work according to the party's dictates.

The CPI(M) employed terror tactics during election time, organised proxy voting and `chappa' voting where the party's sympathisers stuffed ballot boxes or used the electronic voting machines to keep recording votes for their candidate. This kind of electoral fraud mainly took place in rural areas away from media scrutiny.

"Scientific rigging was invented by the CPI(M) for West Bengal," he said.

Today, the CPI(M)'s vote share was around 50 per cent. If elections were held in a free and fair manner, the party will get no more than 30 per cent of the votes polled, he added. State BJP president P.S. Sreedharan Pillai was also present on the occasion.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Kerala