BJP to renew attack on UPA

NEW DELHI: By asking B S Yeddyurappa to resign the BJP Central leadership will get a free hand in overseeing the election of his successor.Earlier in the day on Thursday, Nitin Gadkari rushed Venkaiah Naidu to Bangalore to ensure smooth transition of power in the lone BJP-ruled state in the South.However, the party did acknowledge the role of Yeddyurappa in the expansion of the base of the erstwhile Jan Sangh and later the BJP, which made Karnataka the first state in the south to have a BJP government.Sensing that the party would now regain its moral high ground, BJP general secretary and chief spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad said the party would take on the Congress and expose its corruption with renewed vigour. Showcasing the party’s decision on Yeddyurappa, Prasad said in contrast two Congress leaders, Sushil Kumar Shinde and Vilasrao Deshmukh, both linked to the Adarsh scam, continued to be Union ministers.What was worse, the party could not sacrifice even a minor Delhi Minister, Raj Kumar Chauhan, he added.Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s silence was surprising and curious, as perhaps she had no answers, he said.The BJP Parliamentary Board on Thursday named Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley, who has been in-charge of Karnataka, and former BJP president Rajnath Singh as the BJP Central observers, who will go to Bangalore on Friday to oversee the election of new BJP Legislature Party leader. Conspicuous by his absence at the meeting was BJP general secretary Ananth Kumar, who is also the BJP Parliamentary Board secretary, as the issue related to his home state.