Oppn slams BJP on N-doctrine

Congress party general secretary Pranab Mukherjee told journalists that a caretaker government without the mandate to rule cannot bring out a nuclear doctrine but stopped short of calling it a violation of the Election Commission’s model code of conduct.

“It is an attempt to influence the elections but I don’t know whether it is a violation of the code of conduct and if the EC has a role”, he said.

The Congress felt the doctrine could have been brought out earlier but there was no consensus on theissue among the ruling coalition’s partners themselves.

He criticised the BJP’s nuclear policy as a whole with stress on the reference to India’s nuclear deterrent. “What kind of a statement is it that our nuclear deterrent solved the Kargil issue (as said by the Prime Minister’s principal secretary Brajesh Mishra on Tuesday while releasing the doctrine). The Pakistani intruders knew very well that India is a nuclear state. It didn’t prevent anything.

On the BJP’s call for a debate on the issue, Mukherjee felt there could be a debate but only in a “cool atmosphere when there is a regular government which can steer the debate”.

He said the BJP’s nuclear policy is full of contradictions as it first claimed that China was the reason for the country’s nuclear tests. “And now, they say that Pakistan is the target.”

The Congress added that a nuclear arms race may be stirred because of the “irresponsible acts of the government”. Describing the draft doctrine as an illegitimate act, the CPI(M) said theBJP-led government was playing with serious issues like national security for “petty electoral gains”.

The CPI(M)’s primary critique of the doctrine was about its formulation of a “credible minimum deterrence”. “India and Pakistan would enter into a mutually endless cycle of nuclear arms upgradation”, Polit Bureau member Prakash Karat said, adding that vast sums of money would be required to keep ahead of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.

“This illegitimate nuclear doctrine by an unaccountable government must be rejected for what it is: Nuclear sabre-rattling to garner votes for an irresponsible and jingoistic party,” Karat told journalists.

Questioning the motives of the government in releasing the document when there was no elected government in office, the CPI(ML) said the Vajpayee government had “blatantly come up with a war-mongering posture”.

Whatever the criticism of the Opposition parties, the BJP welcomed the doctrine saying it was a fulfillment of promises on national security made bythe BJP in earlier elections.

The government’s decision to open the issue of nuclear doctrine to a public debate so that a national consensus emerges, was a step in the right direction, a BJP statement added.