BJP getting ready for stormy Parliament session: Ananth Kumar

Nizamabad: BJP is getting ready for a “tumultuous” winter session of Parliament with government having no answers to corruption charges, says Ananth Kumar, the chief organiser of LK Advani’s rath yatra. “They (Government) are in the dock. The winter session of Parliament will be tumultuous. They have no answers. They want to amend RTI. They cast aspersion on CAG. They are not cooperating with PAC. They are perturbed about Supreme Court monitoring their activities,” Kumar told PTI. [caption id=“attachment_111717” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Yashwant Sinha (L) with Ananth Kumar. AFP Photo”]  [/caption] Congress was keeping silent about Advani’s ‘Jan chetna Yatra’ against corruption as there were no scams during the NDA rule, he said. “When you are embarking on such a huge campaign against corruption, will they keep quiet. All the government records are in their care. If they are silent it means there is nothing,” he said. Referring to the 2G spectrum allocation scam, he said the Congress and the government find themselves on the backfoot with no answers to corruption charges. Kumar said that Advani’s yatra was planned with the winter session in mind. “The most important factor was the timing because Monsoon session concluded on 8 September. And usually the winter session starts in the third week or last week of November as it has to conclude before Christmas. We went through the calendar and speculated that it may start from 21 November, which is a Monday. We had to set the yatra during this period,” he said. The former union minister said that his team had 42 days but during this period “We also had to take into consideration two days for Diwali celebrations and his (Advani’s) birthday on 8 November, which left only 38 days for the yatra. “You can’t go all around the country in a space of 38 days by road only. You can’t go to Guwahati, Itanagar and come back. You can’t at all go to Port Blair.” “Factoring in such logistical issues, we carved out a route which is clock wise,” said Kumar. He said the yatra could have covered more areas in Jharkhand. We are now only touching Ranchi. We could have done more in UP. “We could have done five days only for the North East and feel we could have done more areas of Tamil Nadu,” Kumar said, adding that despite 38 days at his disposal, time was a constraint. Kumar said that party workers were involved at several layers in the management of the yatra. “For two-three states one general secretary is given charge. For each state, there is an in-charge. For each day, there is an incharge. For each place, there is an incharge. The yatra travels “from 10 o clock in the morning to 10’o clock in the evening. Those 12 hours, 6 hours of travel and 6 hours of sabhas,” Kumar said. “Innumerable places, innumerable people, innumerable units have contributed. It is a people’s movement,” he said and added, “there is no extravagance.” PTI