Bhongir: Tearing into BJP for "running a divisive campaign to derive political dividends", Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the opposition party's poll strategy is "centred around" only an individual and its promises can never be fulfilled.
He also defended the track record of UPA government at the Centre under him in combating corruption.
"BJP's election campaign is centred on one individual. They are making only high-sounding talks, which are baseless. They are making such promises which they will never be able to fulfil," Singh said at a Congress rally at Bhongir in Nalgonda district in Telangana region on Saturday.
"We should give more attention to national issues in Lok Sabha elections and one of the big national issues this time is: 'Should a government of such a party be formed which always worked for dividing the society; should your vote go to such a party which works for setting up a fight between one community with another?..." he said while hitting out at BJP.
"You must have heard statements of some BJP leaders in which they openly tried to create a divide in the society.
Though BJP had tried to distance itself from such statements, I feel efforts to divide society is part of BJP's politics.
"It needs to be taken note that these statements came at such a time when elections (are) round the corner; there the BJP feels that divisive politics will benefit the party," the
Prime Minister said.
Singh said the opposition party believed in "divisive politics" to derive political dividends.
Taking exception to BJP's attack on his government for "failing" to check corruption, the Prime Minister said the UPA regime has taken concrete measures like enacting Right to Information and the Lokpal.
"Opposition parties have levelled baseless allegations on the work of UPA. One of these is that we have not made full efforts in reducing corruption. It is not true.
"The truth is we have taken a number of measures towards checking corruption...probably no other government in the country had done in the past. Whenever matters of wrongdoing came to us, we took action as per law to hand out punishment to those guilty," Singh said.
"The common man can now get more information about government's work through the Right to Information. This has not only helped us in knowing wrongdoing but also created a sense of fear among public servants indulging in wrong things," he said.
Stating that Lokpal is a big step towards eliminating corruption, the Prime Minister said the government has put in place a system to end wrongdoing in distribution of natural resources in future.
"We wanted to make more legislations towards eliminating corruption but due to BJP's non-cooperation in Parliament, these laws could not be enacted," he said.
The Prime Minister said the UPA government had always tried to work as per the expectations of the people during its second tenure and has "achieved success in many fields" though he added that the success was not as desired in some areas.
"When I think of the past ten years, I find that the scenario in the country has changed to a great extent. I see that the progress achieved in the last ten years has never been made in any other decade previously. The changes that have come in the past decade... did not come in any other (previous) decade. Our record in the area of economy has been better than any other previous government," he said.
Seeking to showcase the track record of the 10-year UPA regime, Singh spoke at length on "significant achievements" in various areas like substantially enhancing minimum support price for farmers and introducing the Food Security Act.
