Agra, Feb 24: Terming as “shocking” the remarks made by Union Minister Shri Prakash Jaiswal that President's rule could be imposed in Uttar Pradesh if Congress did not get a majority, BJP leader L K Advani today said his party would oppose any such “undemocratic means” of grabbing power.
“Democracy in the country is strong enough to thwart any attempt of grabbing power through undemocratic means,” Advani said.
The BJP would not tolerate any attempt to impose President's rule in UP, Advani said.
Advani said that it was the first time ever that a party had accepted defeat even before polling in an election had not been completed.
Union Minister Jaiswal had said yesterday that if Congress fails to get a majority in UP Assembly polls he sees a possibility of President's rule. However, later, the minister retracted from the statement after he came under attack from opposition parties.
“If Congress gets majority then it will form the government... In case we don't get clear majority we sit in the opposition and I see no alternative but governor's rule,” the Union Coal Minister had said.
Advani said he was taken aback when he heard what the Congress minister had said, and warned that Indian people would once again do what they had done in 1977 when they had thrown out a government that had ruled undemocratically for nineteen months.
Saying that the voting this time was very encouraging, he asserted that he would like a law to be made that would make voting compulsory.
Talking about the alleged corruption in the commonwealth games Advani said, “While the image of countries holding the commonwealth or Olympic games kept on improving as the date of completion of work neared, the case with Indian was different: its image kept on plummeting because of the doings of the Congress government and the major functionally of the Games.”
Advani said the reason why prices were spiralling was that there was no check on corruption, despite the fact that there were noted economists in the government and in the Planning Commission.
Speaking about the stacking of black money in Swiss banks, Advani said that the United Nations had passed a resolution providing for the return of money stored in foreign banks to the country from where it had came.
The Swiss Government had also passed the Restitution of Illicit Assets Act.
He said that the Union Finance Minster had assured him that he would present a “white paper” on how much money was stacked in Swiss Banks and how it could be bought back to India.
Advani claimed that his estimate was that as much as Rs 25 lakh crore was kept by Indians in Swiss banks, which if brought back to India, could make the country a place where there would be no village without electricity, and no field without water and a new Indian could be born.
