Thaindian News

Lucknow, June 3 (IANS) Congress leader Rahul Gandhi may be seen as a huge vote-catcher by his party, but the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) does not consider him as any potent political force, its leaders said Friday.

“We have seen Rahul Gandhi’s capabilities in the Bihar assembly elections, where he failed to make any impact,” BJP’s national spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad said here.

“Even though Congress tried to project him as their youth icon and despite the fact that Bihar has a very large number of youth voters, the Congress fared miserably there,” he said at a press conference after the inaugural session of the party’s two-day national executive.

Prasad’s response came to a query on the probability of pushing BJP MP and Rahul Gandhi’s cousin Varun Gandhi among the lead BJP campaigners for the state elections in Uttar Pradesh next year.

He, however, skirted the issue of Varun taking any lead role in the poll campaign.

Earlier, BJP president Nitin Gadkari too sought to ridicule Rahul Gandhi for what he termed his “pro-poor” gimmicks.

“Back in the 1970s, (then prime minister) Indira Gandhi gave a slogan of “garibi hatao”… four decades later, her grandson (Rahul) was also trying to raise the same slogan, which speaks volumes of how the Congress had been fooling the people of this country for decades,” he said.

“Today, the UPA government has listed those earning Rs.21 a day as well-off. Therefore, I would like to ask Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as well as UPA (United Progressive Alliance) chairperson Sonia Gandhi to tell us what can one purchase with Rs.21?”

Flaying the UPA government, Gadkari termed Manmohan Singh as a “non-performing prime minister, who himself often made no bones about the fact that he was ignorant about many things happening right under his nose”.

Blaming the increasing unemployment on the UPA government, Gadkari said: “While several Indian investors were moving out of the country, the UPA regime had failed to attract any foreign investments over the recent past.”

Citing figures, he said that FDI during the last financial year had gone down to almost one-third of what it was in 2009-10, “which reflects how foreign investors were fast loising interest in India”.

Terming the seven year UPA regime as “highly disappointing”, he said “it was responsible for “reducing a thriving surplus economy to a deficit one”.

Blaming the UPA government “rampant corruption” at all levels, Gadkari said: “What India needs is a strong government that alone can stamp out corruption as also deal firmly with the unabated terrorism and provide the nation the much needed internal security, that is in total jeopardy at the moment.”