NEW DELHI, India: The Bharatiya Janata Party President, L.K. Advani, has said the Communist Party of India and: CPI(M) were trying to prop up the “shaky” Rajiv Gandhi’s government at the behest of the Soviet Union.

Talking to newsmen in Patna last evening, he charged the left parties with having sabotaged the move to field a consensus opposition presidential candidate, acceptable even to the dissidents in the ruling Congress. Had the move succeeded, it would not only have dealt a crushing defeat to the ruling Congress in the coming presidential poll but also freed India and its politics form what he said baneful influence of the dynastic rule, he said.

He said a sizeable number of Congress (I) members of parliament and state legislators were ina mood to revolt against Rajiv Gandhi and they were looking for an opportunity to go in for a change.

He supported the demand of the Lok Dal for dissolution of the Lok Sabha and the Bihar State Assembly and fresh elections on the ground that both Mr. Gandhi and the Bihar Chief Minister Bindeshwari Dubey had lost the mandate to govern the country and the state.

In a statement president of the Delhi unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party, M.L. Khurana, said that the people of Haryana State by defeating the ruling Congress in the State Assembly elections had paved the way for the people to remove the “corrupt” Congress (I) government.

The BJP leader said that now it was the duty of the people of Delhi to wage a struggle to remove “anti-people administration in Delhi”.

He said that Rajiv Gandhi was voted to power due to sympathy wave generated after assassination of his mother. The victory achieved due to the sympathy wave was misconstrued by Mr. Gandhias his personal charisma. But, he added, Mr. Gandhi’s two and a half years Tule proved a failure on all fronts. Rampant corruption, inefficiency and the anti-people policies were the hallmark of Rajiv government, as a result of which the ruling Congress lost elections in all states held under the Prime Minister ship of Rajiv Gandhi, he said.

Article extracted from this publication >>  July 17, 1987