Time ripe for BJP to open account in Kerala: Rudy

KOTTARAKARA: Eyeing the May 16 Assembly polls in Kerala, Union minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy on Sunday said that the time has come for the BJP to open its account in the Kerala Assembly. The saffron party, which has so far not succeeded in sending even a single MLA to the state assembly, is launching an all-out battle to woo the electorate.Top BJP national leaders, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will be addressing a series of election rallies from this week.Rudy said that though he was not an astrologer or soothsayer, the writing on the wall was clear that BJP would open its account and the next government would be that of the BJP.Attacking the Congress-led UDF and CPI(M)-led LDF, he said that the Congress at the national level had come to a naught and the Communist party's reign was over not only in India, but all over the world.Referring to the Congress-CPI(M) understanding in the West Bengal elections, he said that while the two fronts fight each other in Kerala on ideological differences, they are friends in West Bengal.Asking party workers not to be disheartened, Rudy added that the BJP, which had started with two MPs in the 1984 Parliamentary elections, emerged as the single largest party with 284 MPs and had over 400 MPs in both houses of Parliament presently, besides over 2,000 MLAs. Goa, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Punjab, Haryana currently have BJP governments, while in J&K, it is part of the coalition government.Union Health minister J P Nadda said it was not the people who had failed the state, but the leaders. He emphasised that the absence of IT hubs in Kerala was forcing about 50,000 IT professionals from Kerala to work in Bengaluru. He further alleged that good construction workers go to Saudi Arabia and Dubai and no development was taking place in the state.