Kesri blasts BJP for 'hijacking the Mahatma'

Congress president Sitaram Kesri has attacked the Bharatiya Janata Party for attempting to ''hijack Mahatma Gandhi'' to secure political mileage.

Alleging that an intense power struggle in the party had forced the BJP to postpone its plenary session at Kanpur, Kesri launched a front attack on BJP president Lal Kishinchand Advani. He was addressing state Congress unit presidents, legislature party leaders and other senior leaders in New Delhi.

''The political forces which were responsible for the Mahatma's assassination are now trying to hijack him in their rath yatras,'' said Kesri said, adding that these people never took part in the freedom struggle.

Referring to the power struggle in the BJP, Kesri said they had postponed their plenary session under the garb of a possibility of an early mid-term poll. ''But the real reason was internal bickering among the top leadership.''

Advani, he said, was ''raising the bogey of an election to protect his own shaky position in the BJP''.

Afraid of facing organisational elections within the party, Kesri alleged that Advani was raising the election issue on and off to keep his post for some more time. ''Why else is he talking of elections?'' he said. ''The Congress, however, was ready to face any eventuality.''

The meeting accepted the action plan prepared by a committee headed by former Union minister Pranab Mukerjee and decided to launch a two-pronged strategy to consolidate the party's gains in Congress-ruled states. In the non-Congress-ruled states, the party would resort to agitational programmes to highlight people's grievances.

Regarding the support to the United Front government at the Centre, the meeting felt it should continue as 79 per cent of the electorate had voted for secular parties in the 1996 general election.

Further, the Congress is committed to preventing communal forces from coming to power at the Centre.

The party decided to hold state-level conferences within two months to educate party workers about the action plan.

Clarifying that the action plan had nothing to do with elections, party spokesperson V N Gadgil said, ''The RSS had launched a disinformation campaign that the Congress is focussing on 220 Lok Sabha seats.''

UNI

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