Kargil will be made a poll issue, says BJP

MUMBAI, JULY 12: The famed forked tongue of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was evident today as Union Power Minister R Kumaramangalam t...

MUMBAI, JULY 12: The famed forked tongue of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was evident today as Union Power Minister R Kumaramangalam tried to negotiate his way out of the question: Will the BJP exploit Kargil in its election campaign? “Kargil may not be our major election plank but it will be an issue,” he remarked.

Asked to explain, he said the BJP will, of course, talk about the victory and the brave soldiers on the front, “Some of us, in fact many of us, might even talk of the Prime Minister’s role in this,” he said. Though Kargil was not yet completely over, the major success this time vis-a-vis 1965 and 1971 is that Indian forces have restored our claim over our land and we maanged to get international retribution for Pakistan, he said. He did not rule out the possibility of a proxy war starting all over again since Pakistan will be smarting from its defeat in Kargil.

Kumaramangalam claimed a significant diplomatic success in that the major world powers recognised the Indian position andticked off Pakistan. However, this did not mean “internationalising the issue”, he said, because we did not ask or welcome or agree to a third-party mediation on any aspect. “The Prime Minister got calls from Washington but he refused to go there and discuss. But if someone sought advice from the US and went there and the US gave it, it’s okay by us. In itself, it does not mean the issue is internationalised.”

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The situation for a Rajya Sabha session was different on earlier occasions, he said, because there was an all-party consensus on calling one, and the then Presidents had made specific requests. These were not the conditions this time round, he said. However, Kumaramangalam was all praise for the citizens’ response and reactions to the Kargil conflict. “There is a tremendous feeling of partriotism and commitment to the country among large sections of the people. I saw some of this for myself when I accompanied Major Sarvanan’s mortal remains to Trichy which is in my constituency,” hesaid.

“We’ll get over 300 seats”

The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) will win more than 300 seats in the forthcoming elections, said R Kumaramangalam today. “This too is a conservative estimate but we will easily do 300 plus,” he said. In Mumbai to attend non-political programmes, Kumaramangalam said that the Prime Minister’s image is the best among all leaders in the country and above everybody else’s; it will benefit the NDA.

Even in Tamil Nadu, his home state, Kumaramangalam was confident that the BJP alliance would do better than last year when it won 30 of the 40 seats. “There’s no contradiction or loss of credibility for us since Jayalalitha herself supported us last time and then made her demands one by one, forcing us to bend and crawl. People have seen this and not liked it. We are not losing out this time at all. In fact, we might win all the 40,” he said.