india

Updated: Jul 04, 2018 03:05 IST

The Congress is fighting a battle for its existence, a shared hatred for him is the sole glue in the “united” opposition, and the next election will be a choice between governance and development on one side and chaos on the other, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in an interview to Swarajya magazine.

He said a Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) type “non-ideological and opportunistic coalition” was “the best guarantee for chaos” and spoke about the internal contradictions within the proposed grand alliance to suggest that “such instability adversely impacts the growth trajectory of our nation”. In Karnataka, after the recent assembly elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party emerged the single largest party with 104 seats in the 224-member assembly, but the Congress (79 seats) forged a partnership with the JD(S) by agreeing to make the latter’s HD Kumaraswamy the chief minister.

The opposition alliances are not motivated by national good, but they are about personal survival and power politics, the prime minister said. “They have no agenda except to remove Modi,” he said in the interview.

The Prime Minister was asked if he is worried about the formation of a grand alliance of opposition parties, much like the groupings that came together in 1977 and 1989 to unseat the then ruling dispensations.

Modi described as “flawed” the comparison between today’s grand alliance and that of 1977 or 1989. “In 1977, the common motive of the alliance was to protect our democracy that was under great threat due to the Emergency. In 1989, the record-breaking corruption of Bofors had hurt the entire nation,” he said.

The prime minister said there was no grand alliance, but a grand race in the opposition for the prime minister’s post. “The whole focus is power politics, not people’s progress,” he said. “How long will the dislike and mistrust these parties and leaders have for each other keep them together?”

He referred to the bitter contest between the proponents of the grand alliance idea in states such as West Bengal and Kerala. The last time, he said, the opposition tried coming together in Uttar Pradesh in 1993; such an alliance could last only two years.

The Prime Minister questioned who was the cementing element of such an alliance. The Congress, he said, is like a regional party that is in power only in Punjab, Mizoram and Puducherry. “Their ‘strength’ in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar is also well known,” he said.

Modi said India knows how the Congress treated its allies, and betrayed and insulted veterans such as Chaudhary Charan Singh and HD Deve Gowda. The Congress can make sacrifices, Modi said, but for its self-interest.

He called the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) a “large and happy family” of over 20 parties that is the leading coalition in various states. “NDA is not our compulsion. It is an article of faith. A large and diverse NDA is good for India’s democracy,” Modi said.

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SETTING THE AGENDA In an interview to Swarajya, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke of several issues -- the Maoist insurgency, Kashmir, allegations that he has centralised all power in the PMO and that his administration doesn’t have adequate talent, and his approach to foreign policy. The interview clearly set out the political platforms the BJP intends to leverage in next year’s parliamentary elections. LEFT WING EXTREMISM "..recurrent terror attacks that were common under the UPA are now history… Maoist violence has declined by 20 per cent in the affected states. The unparalleled development focus is reaping rich dividends… 44 out of 126 districts have been removed from the list of Left Wing Extremism-affected areas." KASHMIR "Our goal in Kashmir is good governance, development, responsibility and accountability. We have appointed an interlocutor, and he is in touch with many people." TALENT DEFICIT "Just because only a few ministers and ministries make it to the front pages or prime-time debates, they are deemed as talented and others are deemed the opposite." "…the UPA, in their last four years, from 2010 to 2014, built 25 lakh houses. This is one-fourth of what the NDA government has built." "I would like to give you another example – of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. This year, the budget allocation for the welfare of SC and ST communities stood at ~95,000 crore. It was under this ‘non-talented minister’ that our government had the honour of bringing the strongest amendments in the SC/ST Act." FOREIGN POLICY "The foreign policy of the NDA government has been about unprecedented outreach with unparalleled outcomes. In 2017, for the first time ever, India registered over 10 million foreign tourist arrivals. This is about 33 per cent higher than 2014…The cumulative FDI equity inflows into India stood at about $ 222 billion in May 2014." "India has become a member of the Missile Technology Control Regime, Australia Group and Wassenaar Arrangement". "I attended two informal summits, in China and Russia. These gave me an opportunity to talk at length about regional and global issues with President Xi Jinping and President Vladimir Putin. These summits are adding great strength to our friendship with China and Russia." NORTH-EAST "Tripura and Mizoram are virtually free from insurgency. In Meghalaya, the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act has been removed from all areas from 31 March 2018 and in Arunachal Pradesh it is remaining only in eight police stations. A system is in place which ensures that every 15 days a minister or a senior official visits the North East. I have made about 30 trips to the region myself". FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION "I find such a discourse about damage to institutions under the BJP absurd and incorrect.…it is the Indian National Congress that has subverted our democracy, judiciary and media, time and again". "Earlier, while only a handful of self-appointed experts were seen speaking about issues, now all it takes is a tweet or Facebook post by a common citizen of India to express himself or herself. This is the power of social media." CONCENTRATION OF POWER IN PMO "If the benchmark of comparison of the present PMO is with the previous PMO, then I don’t think anyone will be surprised to find it more decisive and powerful. " "In this PMO, the 125 crore people (of India) are our ‘high command’."

His remarks comes against the backdrop of the Telugu Desam Party, BJP’s biggest ally from the South, quitting the NDA and the Shiv Sena, BJP’s oldest ally, announcing that it will contest the 2019 election separately.

Modi said the 2014 mandate, when the BJP won a majority on its own (the first for a party in three decades), was “special”, but added that the BJP took allies along and made them part of the government despite having the numbers to rule the country on its own.

Modi said the BJP draws support from all social groups, and was unlike the parties that are “run by families” and draw strength only from a few social groups.

The prime minister reiterated his support to the “one-nation-one-election” idea, simultaneous state and Lok Sabha elections, and suggested that a common electoral roll and simultaneous polls would address several anomalies in the current system.

The Congress hit back at Modi. “The Prime Minister cannot tolerate the Opposition and he should not give suggestions to us about the strategy that we need to use to remove him from the post,” party spokesperson Anand Sharma said. “We know it very well. He should not complain to us that we are going to remove him. Not only him but the ouster of this government is in the national interest and we will complete that work.”

“He is in perpetual election mode and wants to be in a state of conflict with the Opposition. It is him who has prevented building national consensus on key issues,” Sharma added.” It is this mindset of continuous propaganda and confrontation that has come in the way of building national consensus on any important issue.”

The Samajwadi Party (SP) said the agenda of the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayansevak Sangh, its ideological mentor, is to weaken democracy. “To save democracy and strengthen the democratic values, it is important to remove Modi and bring a new Prime Minister. That is our agenda,” SP spokesperson Rajendra Choudhary said.

Sidharth Mishra, professor at the New Delhi-based Vivekananda Institute of Professional Studies and a political analyst said, “The PM has rightly perceived the threat which the grand alliance poses to him. A disintegrated opposition is BJP’s best bet to come back to power in 2019.”