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Thursday, May 22, 2008
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BJP report card to focus on inflation

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party is in the process of preparing a “report card” on the four-year performance of the United Progressive Alliance government. But even before that is out, party spokesperson Prakash Javadekar announced here on Wednesday “it [the government] was a failure on all fronts.”

The first area on which the report card is expected to focus is inflation and the government’s failed responses in checking it.

Next in line are agriculture-related issues that include suicides by farmers, lack of adequate buffer stock of cereals, dependency on imports and, what the BJP likes to describe as, the failure on the food security front.

Mr. Javadekar said he feared the government would stop trying to curb inflation as indicated by the Prime Minister’s comment that there should be no knee-jerk reaction to price rise. The third aspect on which the BJP has much to say is the manner in which the government failed to cope with terrorism.

The repeal of the Prevention of Terrorism Act and failure to allow some State governments to pass legislation similar to POTA are some of the issues on which the BJP holds the UPA government guilty.

Mr. Javadekar noted there had been 22 major terrorist attacks in India in the last four years. What is worse, there has been no major breakthrough in investigations leading to the arrests of terrorists in any case.

Lack of proper policy to develop special economic zones and delays in completing the Golden Quadrilateral project, conceived during the National Democratic Alliance regime, were other subjects mentioned as adding to the all-round failure of the government. As proof that people were disenchanted with the Congress, Mr. Javadekar pointed out that the party lost its governments in Kerala, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Meghalaya and had failed to win Gujarat.

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