‘Cost of stable govt dictatorship?’

Bengaluru: Former finance minister Yashwant Sinha, who quit the BJP recently, on Sunday launched a scathing attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party for its approach in the recently concluded assembly election in Karnataka and its desperate attempts to “buy” MLAs to form the government.

At a discussion on “Threat to Democracy-Constitution”, the outspoken former BJP leader said that the BJP is of the firm belief that whatever the election result may be, they will form the government. “The mandate does not matter for the party anymore, but the ability to buy MLAs and MPs after the elections to form the government like in Meghalaya, Goa and Manipur,” he alleged.

“The party tried to apply the same theory in Karnataka but failed miserably. But political developments in the state today are a rehearsal of what will happen after the Lok Sabha elections. If we don’t wake up now, we are going to rue and regret the day that we remained sleeping and allowed democracy to slip out of our hands,” he warned.

He said, “If the meaning of stable government is a dictatorship, the country should not have a stable government.” He claimed that the BJP at the Centre is ‘systematically manipulating’ all the four pillars of the Constitution and ‘deliberately spreading fear’ among people so as to make them afraid for questioning the working style of the government.

“The BJP is destroying democratic institutions and undermining the Constitution,” he said.