Day 91

When the Congress party, came in the power in 2004, with the collaboration of many regional parties and with the outside support from the Left parties, then it issues a momentum. It was called Common Minimum Programme (CMP), by the UPA government. But after five years, none of the promises made in this CMP were made. Typical Congress style. Make promises in the election time and then remember those promises in the next election. And then give assurance to do the public that the promises made in the last elections will be fulfilled if they are again voted in to form the government. I want to ask a question now. When you were in the government for the full five years, then you didn’t got the time to fulfil any promise, then how can you expect the public to vote you in again to form government, just on the assurance? Let’s have a look on some promises made by the UPA in the last election.
First promise was to enact a model comprehensive law to deal with communal violence and encourage each state to adopt that law to generate faith and confidence in minority communities. But the end result was that it didn’t work on that. It simply dropped the idea to limit itself to enact a model code for each state separately. It tried to bring a Bill in 2005. In the Bill it was authorising the Centre to declare a riot affect area as communally disturbed area without taking any account from the state government and Centre will assume the responsibility of restoring the law and order of that place. I think this was more politically motivated to turn down the states not having Congress government. But these promises were total turndown.
Second promise was to give judicial reforms to fresh momentum. But the UPA government was not able to curb the growing incidences of corruption in the higher judiciary. This led to the failure of the UPA government in converting a Bill into a law providing statutory machinery for judicial accountability. This Bill was pending since 2006. This Bill never became an act.
Third promise was to make the Lok Pal Bill into a law. But the UPA government failed in this Bill also. The main reason due to which this Bill never became a law is that no political party wanted it to become a law. Not even the Congress party. Because of the recommendation of the Administrative Reforms Commission in 2007. The recommendation was to give the ombudsman for the political corruption a constitutional status and to be named as ‘Rashtriya Lokayukta’. The Congress party wasn’t having any will to make this Bill a law because of some of the some key partners of the UPA government.
The fourth promise was about the reservation of women in all the vidhan sabhas and the Lok Sabha. Well we have been listing about this promise since ages. The promise every time been made for the one-third reservation for the women in all vidhan sabhas and Lok Sabha also. But this promise is not yet fulfilled despite of having some fanfare in the Rajya Sabha in May 2008.
The fifth promise made by the UPA government was to bring a Constitutional Amendment to ensure the democratic, autonomous and professional functioning of cooperatives. But this promise was made on the paper only like all other promises. The UPA government hold elaborate consultations on this proposal. But it really failed to reach the stage of introducing a bill to bring any Constitutional amendment for the cooperations.
These were some of the promises made by the UPA front in the last Lok Sabha elections. But these promises turned to be just empty promises. The promises that were made not to be fulfilled. And the Congress party in particular and the UPA in general still wants the people of India to vote for them in this Lok Sabha election. Now it’s your turn to think and vote. Will you vote for a government who is not coming to your expectations and its promises made to you in the last election?