NEW DELHI: BJP veteran L K Advani today asked the partymen to adopt zero tolerance against corruption.
Mr Advani, while speaking during the concluding session of the party’s two-day National Council here, said the party did not handle the Karnataka crisis properly.
He said the party should have taken strong steps in Karnataka, the first ever BJP-ruled state in South India.
Former BJP leader B S Yeddyurappa had resigned from his post after corruption charges. He quit the BJP and formed a new political outfit last year.
“There should be no compromise with corruption. There should be zero tolerance against corruption,” he said.
Mr Advani said,”Without mincing words let me admit that our wavering and unprincipled handling of the situation in Karnataka caused great damage to our image. We forgot that the people judge the commitment of any political party to fight corruption not by its pronouncements but by its practice and, when the need arises, by its punitive actions.”
He said when the BJP was launched in 1980, former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had urged the partymen to become “a party with difference”.
“…However, contrary to this aspiration, the image of the BJP that has gained ground in the past few years, is that of a party with differences, which also keeps talking in multiple voices,” he added.
The BJP veteran further said the party takes legitimate pride in the fact that it was a non-dynastic party that values and promotes internal democracy.
“But we must recognise that internal cohesion, especially at the top levels of the organisation, sustains internal democracy. If internal cohesion is allowed to be weakened by lack of internal discipline, which has always been the hallmark of the BJP and earlier the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the party begins to project an image of an organisation suffering from internal differences,” he said.
He urged party chief Rajnath Singh, in cooperation with senior leaders at the central and state levels, to start taking firm steps to remedy this situation.
Mr Advani slammed the Congress-led UPA government on various issues.
“The popular mood in the country is anger and revulsion against the Congress-led government at the Centre. Many factors are feeding this mood, but chief amongst them is the firm belief among all sections of society that this is the most corrupt government in the history of independent India,” he said.
He alleged that the Centre has completely failed to control price rise.
He said it was “crystal clear” that the people of India “want to get rid of the UPA government.”
Mr Advani said the BJP must work closely with all the like-minded parties ─ both those within the NDA and those outside the NDA ─ to reassure the people that a strong, viable non-Congress alternative, with an agreed agenda of good governance, was available before them.
“This is what I had meant, when, in my remarks at the last meeting of the BJP’s National Executive at Surajkund, I had put forward the idea of NDA-Plus,” he said.
“Let us convey a strong and credible message to the people of India that the BJP is ready to rise to the occasion by meeting their expectation for a stable, visionary and transformative alternative to the non-performing UPA,” Mr Advani added. (AGENCIES)
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