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BJP changes tack, assails government

NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party has changed its tune within 12 hours of its call on Thursday for national unity and for all sections to sink their differences in the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks.

By the time he landed in Mumbai, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha L.K. Advani had begun expressing mild criticism of the government for not being hard enough on terror. Before the evening wore out, the BJP had finalised its new election campaign for New Delhi, which appeared in many newspapers on Friday morning: “Brutal terror strikes at will, weak government, unwilling and incapable.”

By Friday afternoon, Mr. Advani became more critical: “The government’s non-serious approach in this regard [to terror] is reinforced by reports that the Mumbai attackers arrived in the city by the sea. Official agencies had been warning the Home Ministry for some time about such a possibility, but the government did nothing to bolster the Navy or the Coast Guard’s capacity to intercept rogue boats… the government needs to take whatever intelligence inputs it receives seriously and act on it.”

While one senior BJP leader admitted that the first reaction to the Mumbai incidents was that it would appear wrong on the part of the party to criticise the government when it faced a “war-like” situation — Mr. Advani himself initially described the terror attack as a “full-scale war on India” — the leadership felt that it could not let go of the opportunity to electorally cash in on the episode.

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