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National

Congress suffering from siege mentality: Gadkari

Sujay Mehdudia

Nitin Gadkari

NEW DELHI: The Congress suffered from a “siege mentality” and was using ‘abusive' language against the Opposition to deflect the nation's attention from its “failures,” the Bharatiya Janata Party said on Sunday while refuting the charges levelled by Congress president Sonia Gandhi against it.

“The Congress is suffering from a mentality of a party under siege. Ms. Gandhi's speech sounds like the reaction of a party under siege. Instead of answering calls from the people on core issues, we see her replicating the Congress conduct when they were under attack right from the Bofors scandal and till date,” BJP president Nitin Gadkari said in a statement.

Mr. Gadkari alleged that the Congress indulged in “pretended aggression” to deflect the country's attention from its “failures” in checking corruption, non-performance of the UPA-II government, its “alienation” from the people and mistrust among its allies. “The Congress should introspect during their scheduled brainstorming sessions on how it has missed out yet another opportunity to answer people on the core issues that are posing a challenge today,” he said.

At a press conference here, BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman said that by using abusive language, Ms. Gandhi had attempted to deflect the nation's attention from the failures of UPA-II. “We shall definitely raise these questions on the public fora and make sure the Congress will answer.”

Defending the stalling of Parliament over the 2G spectrum scam, she rebutted Ms. Gandhi's charge that the BJP resorted to political blackmail. “Pranab Mukherjee has also chosen to say in a resolution that the principal Opposition party has led Parliament towards almost a subversion of the Constitution. These are not the ways in which the ruling party is expected to come with its answers to people.”

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