Economic uncertainty: BJP demands early LS polls

Upping the ante against UPA, the BJP on Friday demanded that Lok Sabha elections be held this year itself as ‘the country can ill-afford’ a ‘paralysed’ government at this moment of crisis. A BJP delegation, led by its senior leader LK Advani, met President Pranab Mukherjee and petitioned him to end the ‘prevailing uncertainty’ by advising the government to seek a fresh mandate at
the earliest.

Elections, the party said, should not be held later than the state elections due in three months. ‘The country can ill-afford at this moment of crisis a government which is paralysed, a Prime Minister who never speaks, a Finance Ministry who wrongly blames his predecessor who is unable to defend himself, a supreme leader who does not care about where the money will come from and a bureaucracy which is frozen and unable to act,’ BJP said in its memorandum.

Talking to reporters later, Advani said finance minister P Chidambaram was blaming Mukherjee, who was his predecessor before being elected President, for the mess in which the country’s economy is.
‘If the country is rid of the present government and p eople are given a fresh opportunity to elect a new government it would be in the best interest of the country,’ he said.