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Sheela Bhatt in New Delhi
The president of the Bharatiya Janata Party M Venkaiah Naidu on Tuesday sought to take the battle to the Congress camp saying the party has no right to criticise the Centre for the petrol pump allotment scam.
An aggressive Naidu talking to rediff.com asserted that the allotment issue would not blow up to be the 'Bofors of the BJP'
"You wait and watch. The Congress has no right to criticise us. The cancellations of the allotments of petrol pumps made after January 2000 is a masterstroke of the Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee," Naidu said, fending off the suggestion that the issue will affect the image of the party.
Following a series of articles in the Indian Express on many of the beneficiaries being close to the ruling party, Vajpayee cancelled the allotments of 1134 petrol retail outlets, 1788 LPG distributorships and 236 kerosene dealerships.
But the party has claimed that out of 3000-odd allotments, only 'around ten per cent were made to the relatives of the BJP functionaries'. "Does Congress have the moral courage to ask for the cancellation of all the allotments made in last ten years to their favourites?" Naidu asked.
Naidu said that the BJP could also produce a list of the beneficiaries belonging to the Congress party. "Ab tho majha aayega (Now the fun begins). Let us see what the Congress has to say for the petrol pump allotted to Girija Vyas (Congress leader from Rajasthan) and Digvijay Singh's (Madhya Pradesh chief minister) relatives?"
According to sources in the BJP the message that has gone down the rank and file of the party is that Vajpayee is still the leader, though the Deputy Prime Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani may portray himself as the 'new and stronger' power centre.
They said that Naik, being an Advani loyalist, would lose his authority within the Cabinet, where he has been stubbornly opposing Arun Shourie's divestment plans for the oil companies.
In his home-turf of Maharashtra too, Naik would lose the edge to his rival Pramod Mahajan, they said.
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