Congress to focus on unemployment, farmers' plight in poll campaign

Mindful of the BJP's bid to focus on development issues in the run-up to Lok Sabha polls, the Congress decided March 9 to highlight the problem of unemployment and the plight of farmers in its manifesto and has come out with a "political statement" charging the NDA with compromising national security and undermining democratic institutions.

The party declared it would "thwart NDA's pursuit of power for parochial and personal ends" by seeking to forge a "solid phalanx of secular political forces" in the coming polls.

The political statement, adopted after a four-hour meeting of Congress Working Committee, declared it was the historical responsibility of the party to "save the country from this ominous danger".

After the meeting, Congress President Sonia Gandhi said the two issues were among the major ones the party would address in the elections.

The party also plans to come out with a "Vision Document" to expose the BJP-led ruling coalition's claim of a "shining India". Chief Spokesman S Jaipal Reddy told reporters that apart from the Manifesto, the party would come out with comprehensive statements on various problems faced by Women, youth, workers and weaker sections of the society.

The statement charged the BJP-led NDA coalition with "weakening the sinews of good governance", and of "compromising beyond measure" national security which should be the first charge of any government.

The CWC also said the "NDA government did not even dare to have a discussion" on the Subramaniam Committee report which documented 'failures' during the Kargil war and which was tabled in Parliament three years ago.

Alleging that terrorists had a free run from Kashmir to Akshardham in Gujarat for the past four years, the party said ultras also dared to attack Parliament, Red Fort, temples in Jammu and pilgrims to Amarnath and Vaishno Devi.

"Till now the country does not know as to how this happened and who is responsible for the failure to provide protection to these places", the CWC said.

The statement said "Let us face the reality that today the political apparatus of our country has been sought to be captured by set of people who owe their allegiance only to RSS which came into existence in early 2oth Century to support the British Colonial Power that had held India in bondage".

Detailing what it called acts of commissions and omissions of the coalition, the CWC charged it with "tampering" with every single democratic institution which the Constitution brought into existence.

"They began with an attempt to tamper with the Constitution of India in which they miserably failed", the statement reads. "It is a matter of historical record that even the two nation theory, which projects India as a country where two distinct nationalities – Hindus and Muslims – exist, who have nothing in common and are eternally in conflict, was propounded in India for the first time by the RSS", the statement said.

"This poisonous theory was continuously fed into the body politic and was "ultimately used by the then Muslim League to press for the creation of Pakistan," it said.

The CWC said the choice was whether "these unprincipled and opportunistic forces should be confronted boldly and stopped in their tracks and prevented from splintering the nation into competing identities while the secular ideal which bonded India into a nation state for the last 56 years of its independence is damaged beyond repair".

Reddy also said that no discussions had taken place on alliances with like-minded parties.

"We have already finalised alliances all over the country but alliances in Uttar Pradesh was not discussed. In our view we have outstripped BJP on two counts – alliances as well as the election preparedness", he said.

He also dismissed suggestions whether Congress was going to compromise on the question of leadership saying the party President Sonia Gandhi has already clarified on the matter.