Sonia’s challenges too self-serving: Advani

AHMEDABAD, February 28: BJP president L K Advani today said the ``hit-and-run strategy'' adopted by Sonia Gandhi was a dangerous new feature...

AHMEDABAD, February 28: BJP president L K Advani today said the “hit-and-run strategy” adopted by Sonia Gandhi was a dangerous new feature of this Lok Sabha election, “with no parallel even in the long authoritarian rule of Indira Gandhi”.

“Sonia did not meet the media once during the entire campaign nor did she care to answer any of the questions raised by the BJP,” Advani said in a statement after casting vote with wife Kamla at Shahpur under Gandhinagar constituency from where he is contesting the Lok Sabha polls.

“Our questions were prompted by the wild allegations and self-serving challenges that Sonia herself had hurled in her election speeches,” he said.

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“Congress and its only campaigner Sonia took the campaign as a licence for diatribe and monologue, while the BJP treated it as an occasion for debate and dialogue,” he said.

The BJP presented a serious vision for rebuilding India and stressed the need for a broad national consensus on all vital issues in its manifesto, while theCongress and its “overt and covert allies in the United Front” harped on “barren anti-BJP-ism based on the lie that the BJP is a communal party”, in their manifestoes, he said.

Advani said he was happy that the BJP had introduced many relevant national and regional issues during its campaign and sought a positive mandate on that basis.

The main issues raised by the party were the need for a stable and honest government, need to have an able, experienced and upright prime minister, the track record of the UF and Congress governments, a 10-point freedom charter to build a prosperous and corruption-free India and need to defend democracy and constitutional order, he said.

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“The issue of defending democracy introduced itself mid-way when Congress slavishly surrendered before the dynasty and made Sonia its sole campaigner,” he said.

“The issue acquired further urgency when our opponents, panicked by the prospects of imminent transfer of power to the BJP and its allies, made a last-ditch effort todislodge us from power in the country’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh,” he said.

“The collective conspiracy of the Congress-UF combine has badly boomeranged on them, but the ugly interlude in UP has issued a timely warning to the democracy-loving people of India,” he added.

Meanwhile in Gandhinagar, an estimated 25 to 30 per cent voting was recorded till 1300 hrs in all the 26 Lok Sabha and 182 state assembly constituencies.“Overall percentage of polling was between 25 and 30 till this afternoon”, official sources said.

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Highest percentage of voting was recorded in north Gujarat constituencies of Mehshana, Banskantha, Patan and Sabarkantha. The reports from the region said the polling was above 30 per cent whereas it was below 25 per cent in Saurashtra region.