NEW DELHI: Sending a tough message ahead of UP assembly polls, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said "communalism" and "sectarianism" will be fought in all forms as he justified Government's minority targeted programs in view of "current disparities".
"We will fight communalism and sectarianism in all their forms and manifestations. We will defend the secular and pluralistic basis of our democratic Republic," he said while replying to the debate on the Motion of Thanks to the President's address in both Houses of Parliament.
Against the backdrop of Congress' debacle in Punjab and Uttarakhand for which price rise was one of the factors blamed, Singh admitted that "a lot more needs to be done" but expressed confidence that recent measures taken by the Government would have a "desired effect".
The Prime Minister candidly acknowledged the constraints coming in the wake of rising prices of oil and food grains in the international market. "It becomes difficult to control the domestic prices when international prices of both petroleum products and food grains are experiencing a rising trend". Amid the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) controversy and the Singur row, Singh found a friend in West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya.
"I do sincerely believe that my friend Buddhadeb is right when he says the time has come in this country to work steadfastly to rapidly industrialize the economy," he said. Hitting back at Leader of Opposition L K Advani, who headed the Home Ministry during the NDA rule, Singh said the UPA Government had a better track record on the issue of internal security.
"Let me assure him (Advani) that in terms of real hard work on the ground, our Government and our Home Ministry have a better track record to show than that of the previous Government," he said. Singh said "even when we have had terrorist incidents like the ones we saw during the NDA rule, we have not had a breakdown of law and order and upsurge of communal violence of the type we saw in Gujarat.
Compare the violence after the Godhra incident in Gujarat to the situation in Maharashtra after last year's Mumbai blasts". In his exhaustive replies, Singh dwelt on the issue of water-sharing, problems confronting agriculture, Indo-Pak relations and other aspects of foreign policy.
He announced that a meeting of the National Development Council is being called specifically to discuss the problems of revitalizing the agricultural sector. In an apparent reference to the Cauvery row between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, he asked all political parties to treat water as a national resource and not an issue which should divide the people.
"We should all work together in a spirit of national unity and harmony to resolve these issues". Singh said India was looking forward to hosting the SAARC Summit early next month. "India seeks a neighborhood of peace, prosperity and mutually beneficial economic and social development in our sub-continent," he stressed. -
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