Cong slams BJP for Sethusamudram volte face

BJP'S VOLTE FACE: Congress has claimed that the BJP had given the go ahead for Sethusamudram while it was in power.

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New Delhi: In an aggressive step, the Congress has criticised the BJP for its double-speak on the Sethusamudram project, saying that it was the NDA which had conceived the project and had taken the decision to proceed with it.

Saturday's AICC session in New Delhi saw a pamphlet being distribute to party members, which claimed that it had been former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee who had announced the decision to undertake the Sethusamudram project, on October 29, 2001.

The pamphlet stated, "Even before making this announcement, the Vajpayee government had made a provision of Rs 4.80 crore in its budget for the fiscal year 2000-2001."

It went on to say that BJP leader Arun Jaitley had even directed the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) to prepare a feasibility report which would consider the technological and economic parameters of the project. NEERI had then informed the then Transport Minister, Vijay Goel, that the canal for the project would have to pass through Adam's Bridge.

Neither Goel nor the BJP had registered any protest at the time, the pamphlet stated, before asking whether the NDA had promised the project's completion in its manifesto or not.

Another pamphlet, this time on the nuclear issue was also distributed at the AICC session. This one claimed that the nuclear tests conducted under the BJP's regime in 1998, had been made possible only because of the "commitment of successive Congress governments to develop credible minimum nuclear deterrents to safeguard national security and retain strategic autonomy."

With inputs from PTI