Advani: Cong a family fiefdom, top post reserved for Nehru dynasty

BJP leader L K Advani on Friday said the ruling Congress has been “brazenly appropriated and made into a family fiefdom"...

BJP leader L K Advani on Friday said the ruling Congress has been “brazenly appropriated and made into a family fiefdom,” even as the party is celebrating Sonia Gandhi completing a decade as its president.

Speaking at the India Today Conclave here the Leader of the Opposition said the fundamental difference between the two parties was that while the Congress was dynastic, the BJP was democratic. Consequently, he said all BJP leaders have risen up the ladder through hard work and commitment while the Congress leadership was being handed over from one generation to the next. Advani also came down heavily on the Congress for devaluing the Prime Minister’s office, a pet theme in his recent speeches.

“There is a reservation policy for the top slot in the Congress party: it is reserved in perpetuity for members of the Nehru family,” he said. “The family has now inscribed ‘dynasty’ into the unwritten ‘basic structure’ of the Congress party’s constitution,” he said, trying to contrast it with the “leadership culture in the BJP”.

Naming Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya and Atal Bihari Vajpayee as the three tallest leaders of his party, Advani said: “Each one of them has reached leadership position by virtue of serving the party with devotion and enriching the party’s collective capability with their individual talents. There is no concept of lifelong presidentship for any one person in the BJP.”

Advani accused the Congress of bringing “dynasticism even into the nomenclature of Government schemes”. Advani said in President’s recent address to Parliament there was not “a single scheme mentioned that bears the name of any other national leader” other than the family. He said, the Prime Minister has not contact with the people of India, but “has a contract with just one individual, who is described by many people as the Super Prime Minister.”

He said coalition management and approach to national security were two other issues that contrasts the leadership styles of the Congress and BJP. Advani said the Congress and its allies have “no mutual trust, nor any commitment to a larger national goal. The UPA is nothing but an opportunistic alliance to keep the BJP out of power by raising the bogey of secularism”. He said the lack of cohesion within the ruling alliance has been displayed in the ongoing controversy over the Indo-US nuclear deal. “It is my firm belief that the BJP represents the future of India, whereas the Congress, which was once a common platform of great national leaders, represents much of what has gone wrong in India’s recent past,” he said.