Sandeep Joshi

HALDWANI (Nainital): The National Democratic Alliance’s prime ministerial candidate L.K. Advani on Saturday said the Bharatiya Janata Party-led front will form the next government at the Centre. “The BJP will emerge as the largest party, while our partners will also get a good number of seats. We along with our partners will succeed in forming the next government,” he said.

Addressing a political rally in the Nainital Lok Sabha constituency, Mr. Advani said he had so far covered almost all the States and the response for the BJP and NDA allies was overwhelming. “People are speculating about the number of seats that the BJP will get. I can now say, the BJP and its poll partners will get the numbers required to form the next government,” he said.

Lambasting the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government for “failure on all fronts,” Mr. Advani said, “India has never seen such a weak and corrupt government. It stooped to the lowest level of corruption by giving money to MPs to save its government during the trust vote in the Lok Sabha. It failed to tackle terrorism and check price rise.”

Accusing the Centre of playing vote-bank politics, Mr. Advani said the main accused in the Parliament attack case was yet to be hanged, while the Sachar Committee report was made public just to garner Muslim votes.

“Since Independence, the Congress has ruled the country for over 45 years, but still it has done nothing to improve the condition of Muslims. Poverty and backwardness among Muslims is due to the Congress which has used them as vote-bank but has never cared to bring about schemes for their welfare,” he charged.

However, the BJP’s plank was development and progress of the nation and all its citizens. It did not make policies on the basis of caste or religion. This had been proved in BJP-ruled States such as Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand, he claimed. Mr. Advani promised to remove disparity in pension among retired defence personnel by implementing the one rank one pension policy that had for long been the demand of ex-servicemen.

Uttarakhand Chief Minister B.C. Khanduri said the country needed a decisive leader like Mr. Advani. The Congress-ruled Centre adopted a ‘step-motherly’ attitude towards Uttarakhand and cut the financial package given by the former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.