BJP's governance agenda failing: Omar

'Remarks by leaders mere sloganeering'

 Dismissing as mere ‘sloganeering’ the statements made by BJP leaders on love jehad and forced conversions, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Sunday said such remarks are an acknowledgement that BJP’s governance agenda was ‘failing’.

“I think rather than being worried by it, I think we should take some satisfaction from it because the more BJP is going to tom tom this communal agenda, the more they are basically acknowledging that their governance agenda is failing. They have fought an election on the agenda of governance,” he said.

He was reacting to statements made by BJP’s Uttar Pradesh chief Lakshmikant Bajpayee about ‘love jehad’, party’s campaign chief Yogi Adityanath on forced conversions and controversial statement by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat suggesting that all Indians are Hindus.

Omar also said that he was not surprised over ‘silence’ of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the alleged hate speeches made by his party leaders.

Set speeches

“Why are you surprised. This is the party that went to town criticising the previous prime minister for being quiet. But this prime minister is even more quiet than the other one. Sure you get the set piece speeches at political events and government functions but nothing beyond that,” he told Karan Thapar on his programme ‘Nothing but the Truth’ broadcast on Headlines Today.

Asked whether it could be termed as a double speak on part of the Prime Minister who, in his speech on Independence day called for maintaining communal harmony and on the other has never distanced himself from statements made by party leaders, the Chief Minister said, “Well, I think it’s a bit of good cop bad cop. You make a nice tolerant remark, though you don’t follow them through. You let the others make the more worrisome statements, you don’t admonish them.”

“And you basically divert the attention away what are clearly failures of governance and administration. As I said earlier these sort of statements would be unnecessary and perhaps absent if they had other things to talk about that would be of more interest to people,” he said.

Praising the previous Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for at least talking to journalists while returning from an overseas trip, Omar said, “He (Modi) does not take journalists with him, let alone interact with them.”