The Left today turned around Deve Gowda’s description of Congress leader Sitaram Kesri as an ‘‘old man in a hurry’’ on Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee, wondering why the BJP was desperate to advance elections.Ridiculing the BJP’s thesis for holding early general polls, CPI(M) general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet said: ‘‘It’s a sign of their weakness. ” He picked on the party for calling the Opposition divided when its own house was not in order. ‘‘The BJP is suffering under the notion that the opposition is now divided, (thinking) there are so many parties. So, yesterday they emphasised that no one is leaving the NDA. Today, the PMK has walked out on them.’’The CPI(M) leader slammed Finance Minister Jaswant Singh for laying out a ‘‘partial-budget’’. ‘‘They are distributing doles without any respect for the norms of elections. Not once are they mentioning the promises they had made in the budget that has not been fulfilled.’’CPI general secretary A.B. Bardhan said: ‘‘Under what pretext are they planning early elections? There is no challenge to his (Vajpayee’s) majority in Parliament, the country is under no threat. It has never happened in the history that a Parliament has been dissolved because a political party thinks it has a good chance to win elections.’’Bardhan criticised the BJP for turning its campaign on Sonia Gandhi. ‘‘The low level of political culture and discourse that he (Pramod Mahajan) has brought in speaks of his standard of politics. What does he mean by ‘those who want to defeat the NDA should have their DNA tested’? We have not forgotten that it was his DNA which was being tested in a murder case.’’
