Congress sinking ship, more to escape, says Venkaiah Naidu

Thiruvananthapuram: Union urban development minister Venkaiah Naidu said that no wise man or woman would remain in the Congress party as it was a sinking ship. He was speaking to reporters in Thiruvananthapuram prior to the district office bearers meeting and booth level workers meet. Each union minister has been given charge of a Lok Sabha seat in Kerala to gear up for the Lok Sabha elections. BJP national spokesperson Syed Shahnavaz Hussain who has been entrusted with the charge of Pathanamthitta district said that the BJP was capable of creating a Chief Minister from Kerala. Making its stand clear on bringing in people from all walks of life from Kerala to the party fold, Venkaiah Naidu clarified that the party was yet to take that initiative. 

In the past one week, there have been numerous media reports that a few senior leaders from the Congress party would join the Kerala unit of the BJP. Replying to a question, he said Congress MP Shashi Tharoor joining BJP was just a rumour.  “BJP is game for bringing in minorities but that doesn’t mean that we are appeasing them. Our aim is to give justice to both the minority as well as the majority communities”, said Venkaiah Naidu. He said his party’s stand was that churches should not indulge in politics. He said this when asked whether churches in Kerala were an impediment to the growth of the BJP here.

Regarding Congress leaders' visit to the President of the country on Wednesday, Venkaiah Naidu said the memorandum that the Opposition gave him underlined what they did when they ruled the country. “When they (Congress) win elections, the Electronic Voting Machines are fine and when they lose, they come up with excuses.  We did not bring in EVMs, instead it was first used in 1989 and the Congress won elections in 2004 and 2009 .The Congress is devoid of issues and hence raises non-issues”, added Naidu. Union tourism minister Dr. Mahesh Sharma who was in Pathanamthitta on Thursday, said initiatives such as demonetization and digitalization had given greater acceptance to the governance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the country.

Meanwhile, Shahnavaz Hussain said if BJP was able to create a CM out of a zero in Manipur, the party knew how to create a Chief Minister in Kerala too in future.  He was inaugurating the meeting of the BJP Loksabha constituency booth office bearers meet at Kottayam on Thursday. “After Karnataka the BJP is eying Kerala.  He maintained that the day when a member of the BJP stepped in to the Kerala legislative assembly, Communism  started deteriorating”, said Hussain. More union ministers are expected to arrive in the State to take part in the LS constituency booth office bearers meeting.