BJP tries too hard in MP

Stung by the PR disaster over the cake controversy, the BJP today brought on their best and brightest, Law Minister Arun Jaitely, to take on...

Stung by the PR disaster over the cake controversy, the BJP today brought on their best and brightest, Law Minister Arun Jaitely, to take on Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh. Unfortunately, Jaitley may need more homework to make the charges stick.

He began by unveiling a CII report ‘‘How are the states doing?’’ prepared by the Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies. The study, he observed, ‘‘emanates from a body that at least in Digvijay’s estimation has high credibility’’ and shows the poor performance of the government on all fronts with an overall ranking of D and an overall report card on various fronts of Cs and Ds.

Dalit meet exposes BJP’s bankruptcy of ideas: Digvijay

BHOPAL: MP CM Digvijay Singh on Sunday said the Mhow Sankalp Patra, issued by BJP for Dalits, exposes the party’s ‘‘bankruptcy’’ of ideas. Taking strong exception to BJP leader Uma Bharti’s statement that ‘‘reservation is not a right,’’ Singh said ‘‘it is a constitutionally guaranteed right for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes under Article 16 (4) of the Constitution, framed under the guidance of Babasaheb Ambedkar.’’

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‘‘Either Bharti is unaware of the constitutional right conferred on Dalits or her statement exposes hidden agenda of BJP to scrap reservation in the name of competition,’’ Singh said in a statement. (PTI)

The report makes no mention of where MP stood 10 years ago and it was pointed out that if comparative performance among the BIMARU (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) states is considered then the report consistently ranks MP and Rajasthan, the two Congress states, above the two non-Congress states. The report, in fact, observes: ‘‘Rajasthan’s inclusion in this cluster (the second to last cluster) underlines its breaking away from the BIMARU fold’’ and adds that ‘‘Madhya Pradesh shows signs of climbing out’’.

To this Jaitley replied that one can’t ‘‘rejoice and say reason for joy is to be the better one among the failures.’’ But when asked why UP had done so badly, Jaitley said one must move beyond traditional measures to look at particular states. He went on to compare Madhya Pradesh’s performance with that of Kerala and Himachal.

He quoted the report, which states that ‘‘overall literacy levels are not improving significantly’’ only to be asked why the Centre had conferred the Decadal Achievement Award in Literacy on the state. To which Jaitely said he was not aware of the context in which the award was announced.

Asked if he would take up Digvijay’s challenge to a public debate on the MP government’s achievements, Jaitley said: ‘‘What we need is a response.An oral debate is meaningless. I’m not looking for the political bravado of throwing challenges. The people must have an answer.’’

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