Cong sees revival hope in strong oppn role

Sachchidanand Jha / TNN / Feb 6, 2006, 01:49 IST

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Congress party has embarked on an aggressive campaign against the NDA govt on law and order and development fronts.

Cong sees revival hope in strong oppn role

PATNA: While RJD has been lying low after its debacle in the state assembly elections in 2005, its ally �� the Congress party �� has embarked on an aggressive campaign against the NDA government on law and order and development fronts.
In fact, the Congress is treating its stint in the opposition as a golden opportunity to resurrect itself by highlighting failures of the Nitish Kumar government.
At the party's recent plenary session in Hyderabad, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi observed that the party was not doing well in north India, particularly in UP and Bihar, and it had failed to live up to people's expectations.
The remark appears to have spurred the state unit of the party to play the role of a strong opposition in Bihar by making party workers across the state "active" again.

The party strongly feels it could "capture power" in the state in the next assembly polls if it succeeded in playing the role of an effective opposition.
Not surprisingly, the state unit of the Congress has, of late, become more strident in its criticism of the Nitish government than its ally RJD.
Describing the two-month rule of the NDA government as "a period of 'kushasan' (misgovernance)", chief spokesperson of BPCC Prem Chandra Mishra said that 94 incidents of kidnappings and 304 cases of murders had already been reported during the period though the NDA had made law and order one of its major poll planks in the last two assembly polls and promised to check crime within three months if it was voted to power.

Apart from attacking the NDA government on the law and order front, the Congress has also decided to launch an aggressive campaign to highlight all development schemes, including the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, launched by the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre.
The idea is to prevent the Nitish government from taking credit for those schemes," Mishra said. He said the UPA government had also sanctioned 887-km-long national highway in Bihar, which the party has decided to highlight.
About 1,000 party workers, including BPCC delegates and block presidents, are likely to attend the two-day meeting of the party beginning here on February 13.
The meeting would be addressed by AICC general secretary and Bihar affairs incharge Digvijay Singh. The party workers would be asked to highlight the development programme launched by the UPA government besides exposing the NDA government on different fronts.
When asked why RJD leaders were maintaining a low profile, Mishra said that the defeat in the assembly polls had perhaps "demoralised the RJD leadership".

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