BJP dares Sonia to a debate on Bofors
R R Nair in New Delhi
A week to go for the first phase of polling in the general election, and the
Bharatiya Janata Party seems jittery at the response Congress
campaigner Sonia Gandhi evokes all over the country.
It is now turning the broadside on the Congress's Shoot-and-Scoot expert, asking Sonia to come out openly for a debate on Bofors.
"If the people have questions, it is the duty of rulers and those
who aspire to be rulers to answer them. The Swedish prime minister
has said Sonia knows much more about the Bofors gun deal. Why
can't she reveal the details? Sonia is mixed up. Silence would
mean guilty of involvement, although I don't know about the extent of her
involvement," says BJP president Lal Kishinchand Advani.
The party's central leadership had till now kept away from a personal attack on Sonia, leaving it to allies like
George Fernandes and the local leadership wherever the top leaders
address election rallies.
But it now seems the party's pre-poll assessment has made it
necessary for Advani to address a press conference exclusively
to pose questions at Sonia and the Congress.
The Bofors gun deal, Ottavio Quattrocchi, and Swiss bank accounts
have again become the objects of attack for the BJP.
The BJP's new stand is that the United Front government fell when the Central
Bureau of Investigation sent a letter rogatory to the Channel
Islands seeking the identity of the account-holder who
had received money from Quattrocchi's Swiss
account. "Once this information was revealed, the identity of the
true beneficiary of the Bofors payoff would have been known,"
says Advani.
Admitting that the poll scenario has changed since Sonia's entry
into active politics, Advani claimed that his party is not scared
of the Sonia factor but is seeking a clarification from Sonia since
she was the only Congress leader who is travelling all over the
country campaigning for the party.
Although the Bofors guns has been trained at Sonia, the BJP does not want
to raise the foreigner issue officially. "We
discussed it at our manifesto committee meeting, but didn't take
it up because the Congress has not projected her as the prospective
prime minister," said Advani.
The very admission of a serious consideration of the foreign origin
of Sonia by the BJP manifesto committee, and the slogan 'nationalism
versus foreign hand', are construed as an allout attempt to rake
up the Italian connections in the Bofors deal.
As recent opinion polls come out with a pro-Sonia sentiment among
the voters, Advani was not reluctant to draw a comparison between
Sonia and Bihar Chief Minister Rabri Devi. "As far
as I am concerned I don't know both of them. What I criticise
is the way the Congress has been proclaiming that a party of
freedom fighters and people like Jawaharlal Nehru and Govind Ballabh
Pant should be rescued by Sonia Gandhi."
The Imran Khan phenomenon is how the BJP terms the crowd response
to Sonia. The former cricket captain of Pakistan had evoked
a huge response wherever he campaigned during the last general
election in Pakistan. But when it was time to count the ballots, he had lost his deposit from everywhere he contested.
RELATED REPORT:
Sonia's campaign has revived Congress fortunes, admits Advani
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