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Act on Bofors to thwart Congress, BJP tells PM

George Iype in Bangalore

The Bharatiya Janata Party national executive on Sunday entrusted Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee with numerous tasks in an attempt to improve the performance and image of the coalition government at the Centre.

The executive which adopted a political resolution after two days of deliberations said there is a wide gap between the performance of the Vajpayee government and the people's perception about it.

The party leadership admitted in the resolution that the BJP and the Vajpayee government "could not entirely succeed in creating the correct perception about the government's performance on account of it being bogged down by initial hiccups of coalition politics."

Therefore, it urged Vajpayee and his ministers to take active and immediate steps to inform the people of its achievements that far outweigh those of any other government in the past.

It said the people's "expectations from this government are awesome and the BJP's tryst with the masses is our sacred task." Therefore, the executive issued a warning to Vajpayee: "the government must be seen to be actively promoting a pro-people, pro-poor agenda. The immediate needs of the people and their pressings problems must find top priority in all that the government does."

To remove the misgivings in the minds of the people that the Vajpayee government has been ineffective and non-functional, the executive also decided to launch a nation-wide campaign. BJP general secretaries on Sunday submitted before the executive a blue-print of the action programme.

Replying to the political resolution at the executive, the prime minister presented a progress card of his government. The highlights of the progress card included the Pokhran nuclear tests in May, resolving the Cauvery waters dispute, standing up to economic sanctions, allocation of 60 per cent of funds to the farm sector and restoring peace in Jammu and Kashmir.

He assured his party colleagues that the coalition government is "in the right direction with the right policies." But Vajpayee urged his party leaders to strengthen his hands so that his coalition troubles and the nation's problems can be tackled without any obstacles or hindrance.

BJP president Shashikant 'Kushabhau' Thakre, who held extensive consultations with the party's state presidents, ordered that the local leadership should launch district level rallies and public programmes to proclaim and spread the Vajpayee government's achievements.

"We feel the government has performed extremely well despite the constraints of coalition politics. But we realise now that our biggest drawback has been the failure to spread the message of the achievements of the Vajpayee government across the country," party general secretary Venkaiah Naidu told Rediff On The NeT.

"It is time we repaired the inadequate communication of our government's achievements and certain organisational deficiencies," he said, adding that the national executive did not take up any review of the present coalition set up at the Centre.

"The coalition structure at the present is safe and sound. We have tackled some of the major problems last year. We don't expect any problems that can destabilise the government from our allies this year," Naidu stated.

The executive, however, put forward some vehement demands before the prime minister. It felt that despite the coalition's success in setting new standards in probity, the government has not yet taken any steps to pursue pending cases of corruption like the Bofors energetically and punish the guilty.

Sensing that the re-emergence of the Congress party could weaken the Vajpayee government at the Centre in 1999, the executive urged the prime minister "to seek an early transfer of Swiss documents relating to the sixth account in which Bofors bribe money was deposited."

Though the executive lauded the government's initiatives on the external and internal security matters in the country, it wanted the coalition to take stringent steps to stop the anti-India activities of Pakistan's Inter State Intelligence and other insurgent groups in the country.

It called upon the Vajpayee government to urgently take up the burning issues of population control, legal reforms, judicial reforms and wide-ranging changes in electoral laws.

The executive also demanded the immediate scrapping of the IMDT Act to deport the illegal immigrants from the country and to tackle the problem of illegal immigration especially in the state of Assam.

Senior party leaders who spoke moving the political resolution charged the Congress with conducting a negative campaign of falsehood and half-truths on the issue of price rise.

"With the re-emergence of the Congress, the threat of dynasty over democracy has once again surfaced. The Left is waiting in the wings to join hands with the Congress to destabilise the Vajpayee government at the first opportunity," the resolution said.

On the issue of the fatwa issued by the Muslim Personal Law Board against the singing of Vande Mataram in Uttar Pradesh, it said "the silence of the pseudo-secular parties on this issue is in keeping with the practice of denigrating sacred symbols of national unity by the practitioners of vote-bank politics."

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