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| 'Congress-NCP government has plundered Maharashtra' | | Q&A: Prakash Javadekar |
| Aasha Khosa / New Delhi Sep 06, 2009, 00:02 IST |
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 Prakash Javadekar, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP and spokesperson, speaks to Aasha Khosa about the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance’s chances in the upcoming Assembly elections in Maharashtra. Excerpts:
BJP is going to face elections in Maharashtra with an image that it is a perpetually squabbling party. How will you overcome this?
The BJP surely had some internal problem, which surfaced recently and, in turn, was exaggerated. However, on the ground, voters make their choice on the basis on their perception about the effectiveness of the incumbent government and that of the opposition.
The fact is that Maharashtra, for the past ten years, has had its worst government. The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress have been behaving as if they are rival camps, though they have been running a government for all these years. This government has plundered the state and put it on a backward path.
But why do you believe that voters will chose the BJP-Shiv Sena within months of rejecting it in the Lok Sabha elections?
All over the country, the voters’ reaction is different for Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. In the Lok Sabha polls, the Congress and the NCP combine had got 38 per cent votes while our alliance got 36 per cent. So, turning around the situation is not such a big challenge. In 1999, the state polls coincided with the Lok Sabha elections.
Interestingly; the BJP’s share of votes in the Lok Sabha elections was 39 per cent while we got just 31 per cent votes in the Assembly elections. The difference of 8 per cent gave us a clear idea that the voter thinks differently for national and state elections. So, we cannot link our performance in the Lok Sabha elections with the forthcoming Assembly polls.
Besides, the Lok Sabha elections have thrown up a new trend. Parties whose chief ministers worked their way through peoples’ hearts won. The parties whose chief ministers did not work hard lost, be it the BJP or the CPI(M). We are sure that since the Maharashtra chief minister’s performance has hit rock bottom, people are going to punish him this time.
The presence of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) of Raj Thackery must be worrying you since it played spoilsport for the BJP-Shiv Sena in the Lok Sabha elections. Are you devising any strategy to tackle it?
We recognise the vote-splitter role of the MNS. However, we also feel that a couple of thousand voters who voted for the MNS in the hope that it would emerge as a new alternative would have realised the consequences of their choice. It was due to their votes that the Congress won. Also, because of their votes, non-Maharashtrians won. I must emphasise that the MNS is not the only vote-splitter. In fact, a new front comprising 11 parties has come up and is chanting the anti-Congress tune. The defeat of dalit leader Ramdas Athawale has shaken all factions of the Republican Party of India. The new conglomerate is openly saying that it wants to avenge the defeat of a dalit leader by seeing to it that the Congress loses. Then, of course, there is the BSP. I am trying to bring home the point that vote-splitters will create problems for all and not only for the BJP.
Though the BJP and the Shiv Sena alliance is intact, differences over seat-sharing continue. How serious are these differences?
Our alliance has decided to field candidates on all 288 seats. However, there are a few problems on a couple of seats. This problem has come up due to delimitation of constituencies and it is taking us time to select candidates for a few seats. The differences are not serious and will be sorted out very soon.
Are you projecting any chief ministerial candidate in Maharashhtra?
Our leader Gopinath Munde has always maintained that Uddhav Thackerey (of the Shiv Sena) is our chief ministerial candidate. But at a formal level, we have not taken any stand on this. We will leave this issue open and take a call after the results. The principal that the party with the largest the number of legislators should get the chief ministerial post will be followed. Balasaheb Thackerey and LK Advani will take the final decision on this.
Maharashtra has different political zones and it is said that each one behaves differently in elections. Can you explain this?
The state has six political zones and in each place the voters’ behaviour is different. Of these, Mumbai-Thane is an urban belt with 66 Assembly seats. In Vidarbha, the issue of suicide by cotton farmers is central. Then there is Marathwada, where no economic activity has taken place. Price rise and unemployment are issues that are affecting people all over the state.
So, price rise and farmers’ plight will dominate your party’s poll campaign.
We are going to place before the voters a comparison between Maharashtra and Gujarat, both of which were created in May 1960, and show them how the former has progressed on all fronts while the latter has ceased to be a front-runner. Gujarat was a small and unrecognisable state when it was formed. But able leadership has changed its profile to India’s most progressive and developed state. Maharashtra, in our times, was a food and power surplus state. Food prices in the state were low. In our regime, 400 gangsters were shot dead, which brought peace. The Congress-NCP government has failed to add to the state’s infrastructure. The Nasik highway is incomplete after ten years while the NDA, during its rule, completed the Pune express highway in just four years. The issue of Bangladeshi intruders is topical in Mumbai-Thane.
Bal Thackerey recently wrote in Samna against LK Advani. Are you going to ignore his comments?
Actually, Balasahebji has expressed sympathy with the BJP and its leaders when we are facing internal problems. He wondered why the BJP, despite having such good and capable leaders, was in this state today. He was obviously not happy with what was going on in the BJP. But then, Samna is like any other newspaper which has the right to criticise us. Why should we take offence at its editorial freedom?
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