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Vajpayee blasts Congress for spreading falsehood

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee today charged the Congress with spreading falsehood and stitching up unprincipled alliances to come back to power.

Talking to the media in Jaipur, Vajpayee also accused the Congress of attempting to create instability in the country.

The prime minister expressed shock over the defence of the ''draconian Emergency'' by a Congress spokesman and his assertion that democracy had survived in the country because of the Nehru-Gandhi family.

He said this reflected the mindset of the Congress leadership and betrayed its intention to repeat the 1975 anti-people act if political exigencies so warranted

Vajpayee said he had convened a meeting of all the chief ministers on November 27 to discuss ways to check spiralling prices of essential commodities.

He said the meeting would discuss the steps recommended by the chief secretaries of the states to contain the price hike. Several chief ministers had sent their suggestions in this connection which would also be discussed at the meeting.

On the newly set-up National Security Council, he ruled out bypassing of the three service chiefs. ''There is no question of bypassing the service chiefs in the matter of vital issues,'' he said.

He said that opinion polls do not necessarily reflect the peoples' opinion and that the BJP would win the assembly election.

He said the country had lodged its strong protest to the United States over the blacklisting of 200 companies and organisations in the wake of the economic sanctions.

The government, he added, had taken the matter seriously and the matter was not left to Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Jaswant Singh alone.

Replying to a question about Congress president Sonia Gandhi's reported remark that he was the weakest prime minister in recent times, he said, ''I only act and I do not react.''

UNI

Assembly Election '98

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