BJP dismisses Cong allegation of deal with CPM

Thiruvananthapuram: BJP on Friday dismissed as "baseless" the Congress allegation that the saffron party had not fielded a candidate in Malampuzha, where Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan is contesting, as it had a truck with CPM for the April 13 Kerala assembly polls.

"I reject the allegation as baseless", BJP leader Sushma Swaraj, who began her election campaign in the state, told a 'meet the press' programme organised by the Press Club here. When asked why BJP did not field a candidate in Malampuzha,

she quipped, "Some times it happens." There was no understanding for the party with CPM outside the Parliament, she said.

BJP has only floor coordination with Left inside the Parliament to take up common issues such as corruption against the UPA government, she said. "We are fighting the CPM in West Bengal and Kerala and we have basic ideological differencs with that party", she said.

She said after the assembly polls in West Bengal and Kerala, Left parties would be 'marginalised' in the country. On BJP's poll strategy in south, she said the focus of the party was to become an effective opposition in Kerala, Tamil

Nadu and Puducherry, where at present BJP did not have a MLA.

Price rise of essential commodities, scam tainted UPA government and positive feeling for BJP would enable the party to open an account in Kerala, she said to a question whether the party would make it to the assembly this time.

On the Wikileaks cable disclosures, she said the 'cash for vote' cable should be treated differently than the one on BJP leader Arun Jaitley. On the reported cable remark by Jaitley that BJP was using Hindutva as an opportunistic tool, she said it was only an assumption of a diplomat. But in the case of 'cash for vote', it was a narration of what the diplomat had seen. So, both should not be treated alike, she said.

The opposition leader in the Lok Sabha flayed the cricket diplomacy initiated by India to have talks with Pakistan on the side lines of Indo-Pak World Cup semi-finals and said "UPA government did treat diplomacy as sports."

On Gujarat government banning the controversial book on Mahatma Gandhi by Pulitzer prize winning writer Joseph Lelyveld, Swaraj said, "I have not read the book. So I cannot comment on it. There will be some justification to ban the

book," she said.