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Advani foresees polls in 2008

LUCKNOW: Foreseeing Lok Sabha elections in the first quarter of 2008, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha L.K. Advani said on Sunday that the factors which contributed to the Bahujan Samaj Party’s victory in Uttar Pradesh would help the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) form the next government at the Centre.

He said the BSP gained from the people’s perception that it was best placed to defeat the Samajwadi Party and give a stable government, with the social engineering formula also helping the party. Stating that the stability plank of the Congress had been eroded, Mr. Advani claimed that the people were quite aware that the BJP was in a better position to provide a stable government at the Centre.

From price rise, farmers’ suicide, terror acts, threat to internal security and “minorityism” to corruption, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government of Manmohan Singh had given enough election planks to the BJP, Mr. Advani said.

Mr. Advani, who was addressing the concluding session of the two-day State executive meeting of the party’s Uttar Pradesh unit at the Scientific Convention Centre here, described Dr. Singh as the weakest Prime Minister India had seen.

He said the UPA government would not last till 2009 and there was a possibility of the polls being held in the first quarter of 2008.

Mr. Advani said that the ostensible differences in the UPA coalition were on account of the India-U.S. civilan nuclear deal, but the Congress party’s failure to run a coalition had emerged as the major reason for instability at the Centre.

The Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha reiterated his party’s stand on the nuclear deal and said the BJP was opposed to the undertaking given by the Manmohan Singh government to the U.S. that if it supplied nuclear fuel to India there would be no Pokhran III.

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