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Sangma says threat to BJP comes from within, not AIADMK

Congress Working Committee member and former Lok Sabha Speaker P A Sangma has said that intra-party differences within the BJP were the real problems for the Vajpayee government.

"The AIADMK is not the real problem for the survival of the coalition government in New Delhi," he said while talking to newspersons in Calcutta. Home Minister L K Advani had become the power-centre and not the prime minister, he said, adding that Advani was being ''activated by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.''

Sangma said the AIADMK issue was being blown out of proportion to divert the people's attention from the BJP's intra-party problems.

About his own party, he said it would have to be rebuilt and rejuvenated to prevent current instability in national politics.

This has to be done within the next two years, he said while delivering the keynote address at a business convention, A Vision for the New Millennium, in Calcutta.

He said the fractured mandate in the last four general elections had resulted in the current political instability and felt the political parties and their leaders should address the crucial issue.

He said stability in the government would not be possible without a majority party in the saddle. He felt confidence-building measures should be taken up among the major political parties in the country as ''is normally done in neighbouring countries.''

Sangma felt the country could ''ill-afford'' any reversal of its liberalised economic policy, adding that such a step would be ''regressive'' as the country would be left out of the economic development worldwide.

He said political parties had to face certain facts and must ''delink business from politics'' in the age of information. He said the country should update technology to have access to the information.

The CWC member also said political parties should not feel shy to talk about controlling the population rate, adding that the birth rate had to be brought down to face the emerging realities as job opportunities would dwindle while adopting modern technology. He, however, made it clear that population should be controlled through education and not by coercion.

He said economic reforms should continue and people had to be made aware of the changing scenario sweeping across the world and observed that ''the process of economic reforms have not been affected despite political instability''.

UNI

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