BJP now a `cheer group` for Narendra Modi: Congress on manifesto delay

New Delhi: BJP has reduced itself to a "cheer group" for Narendra Modi following its failure to come out with the manifesto for Lok Sabha polls even three days before the start of the first phase of polling, Congress said on Friday. "A manifesto is an important document of policies and programmes....This is nothing but an insult to democracy and the values enshrined in it. It seems that BJP is no longer a political organisation or a party but a cheer group for a particular individual," party spokesman Randeep Surjewala told reporters here.

He said it was strange that the ideas and suggestions of senior BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi, who is the chairman of the manifesto committee, have reportedly been rejected or put in cold storage with Modi calling the shots. Noting that another member of the manifesto committee Jaswant Singh has been expelled from the party, he alleged that the BJP manifesto will now be founded not on any idea or ideology but the "blind lust of power" of one individual. He dismissed as a "bundle of lies" the "charge sheet" brought out by BJP denouncing the UPA government as a "failure" on all fronts. In the scathing "charge sheet" on UPA`s 10-year rule, BJP has accused Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi of being equally guilty of all ills by exercising authority without responsibility. The party has picked holes in the government`s economic policies that brought "destruction", its policy on defence and national security, foreign policy and "neglect" of North-East, besides "undermining" of institutions including "compromising the diginity and integrity" of the office of Prime Minister.