'Pride comes before fall', Congress tells BJP

NEW DELHI: Congress today reacted strongly to a jibe by BJP that it had been reduced to the status of a "regional party", asking the ruling party to wear victory with humility and warning that "pride comes before the fall".

"The biggest thing which political history teaches us is that pride comes before the fall. The notion of the infallibility of the victorious party has to be tempered by humility," Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi told reporters here.

Earlier, in an attack on Congress, BJP MP Rajiv Pratap Rudy had said, "We never imagined that we will have to welcome a national party as a regional party in this House... What prompted this to happen? Why this mandate? People have punished you (Congress) for your misrule of 65 years."

Rudy's remarks in Lok Sabha triggered protests as he also said that since there was no Leader of Opposition, Congress would not be able to participate in the decision-making process on major matters like appointment of Chief Vigilance Commissioner, CBI Director and the Lokpal.

Hitting back at Rudy, Singhvi reminded the BJP leader that Congress had won 414 seats in 1984, much more than the 282 seats which BJP has secured this time.

BJP had got only two seats in 1984 and there was also a time when it had not won even a single seat, Singhvi said.

He also attacked the NDA government over the contents of the President's Address to the joint sitting of Parliament, saying it was promising a "dream world", which was like 'Mungerilal's' dreams. 'Mungerilal Ke Haseen Sapne' was a popular TV show directed by Prakash Jha about a daydreamer.

Singhvi said that the performance of the UPA government was better on most counts than the previous NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The new government has just changed the nomenclature of some of the schemes initiated by the UPA, he charged.