Union home minister and senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram on Monday dismissed the BJP as a party that stands no chance of coming to power for a decade and even thereafter. He was addressing the 83rd Congress plenary on the concluding day of the two-day event.
Mr Chidambaram called upon Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to seek a quarterly report from all the ministries with regard to their achievements and appealed to Congress supremo Sonia Gandhi to demand a half-yearly report. “Every three months, each minister must give an account to the Prime Minister on what his or her ministry have done. In every six months, the Congress president should ask the government to give an account what has been done in regard to the decision of the plenary session on development,” he said.
Affirming that it would either be a Congress government or a Congress-led government that would be in power at the Centre, he directed his ire at the BJP by saying, “To the BJP I would say, aap ka number nahi aayega (your number will not come) before the decade or even after. For the next 10 years, we would be in government.”
Expressing surprise over the BJP being angry with the Congress, he went on to list out the reasons for it. According to him, it was the “electability” and the “re-electability” that made the BJP jealous of the Congress.
“It is the Congress Party alone which can govern the country for five years and go back to the people and ask for a mandate and get re-elected. The BJP had got one chance and failed. The BJP is envious of the Congress Party. It is the Congress Party which knows how to govern and how to get re-elected and govern the country for second term.”
Drawing a comparison between the UPA government and the previous NDA government, the home minister said, “Note my words, the highest growth rate the NDA could deliver was 6.4 per cent. In contrast to this, during the Congress-led UPA government, the lowest growth rate we have delivered in any year was when there was international financial crisis, and even in that year, we delivered 6.7 per cent growth.”
Taking on those state governments that claim that they don’t have enough resources to deliver on developmental works, Mr Chidambaram said, “Don’t fall into the trap of some state governments which say we don’t have money. Nothing can be further from the truth. Two days ago, all states put together had a cash balance of `95,398 crores. It is a large amount of money. Governments have the money, they have to know how to use it the money.”