Sonia skips Song, BJP sings treachery
Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s decision to stay away from a function organised by the Sewa Dal in New Delhi to mark the conclusion of centenary celebrations of the rendition of national song, Vande Mataram, gave the BJP another weapon to beat i...
By Devesh Kumar, TNN |
DEHRA DUN: Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s decision to stay away from a function organised by the Sewa Dal in New Delhi to mark the conclusion of centenary celebrations of the rendition of national song, Vande Mataram, gave the BJP another weapon to beat its principal political opponent.
The issue figured prominently at the meeting of the BJP general secretaries, which preceded the formal inauguration of the party’s national executive here on Thursday afternoon. And Mr Rajnath Singh departed from the prepared text of his presidential speech to launch a scathing attack on the Congress for her affront to the national song.
Sensing an opportunity to corner the Congress, the BJP president simultaneously announced the formation of five-member committee to hammer out the party’s future strategy on the issue, and also to chalk out the programmes to be undertaken by it in the coming days. The committee, which will be headed by BJP general secretary Arun Jaitley, will also comprise Mr M Venkaiah Naidu, Mr Anant Kumar, Mr Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Mr Sanjay Joshi.
The party, which has been on the look-out for an emotional issue to charge up its cadre, appears to have been found one in the UPA government’s flip-flop on making the rendition of the national song mandatory for all school children and Ms Gandhi’s absence from the function held in the Capital earlier in the day.
“It was a conscious, and not a casual, decision,” BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad said here this evening while quoting the party president. “This became clear when the Congress was found fumbling on the reasons from the function. The claim that she was not well is not convincing at all. Mr Janardan Dwivedi came up with an even more curious explanation — that she had not been invited by the Sewa Dal for the ceremony.”
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“Her action only goes to prove the earnestness of the regard with which she treats the most vibrant signal of India’s freedom struggle,” the BJP president told the members.He poked fun at the Congress party for “denigrating” the national song. “The present day Congress, which is in fact the Sonia Congress, does not represent the legacy of the original Congress,” Mr Singh said. The saffron outfit in Ms Gandhi’s decisions yet another manifestation of the politics of appeasement being pursued by the Congress. “It provides another example of the vote-bank politics,” he added.
In a calculated move to corner the Congress on the issue, the party also said that it’d willing to back the Manmohan Singh government if it initiated moves to amend Article 51(A) of the Indian Constitution, which would make the singing of the national song a fundamental duty on the part of the citizens.
The BJP president also spoke about the need to re-introduce a tough anti-terror law, even if it meant bringing Pota under another name. “We’ll back the government’s initiative if it fulfils the expectations of the security personnel involved in combating the jehadis,” Mr Singh asserted.
He flayed the UPA government’s “healing touch” policy towards terrorism. “The present government lacks the killer instinct to take on the jehadis,” the party president said.
The BJP president, in his 10-page speech, touched upon other issues, including the spiralling prices, farmers’ suicides, unemployment, the setback to the reforms process under the Manmohan Singh regime, Indo-US civilian nuclear deal, Pathak Authority report, attempts to twist historical facts in the NCERT text-books and the women’s reservation bill.
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