The BJP has already declared internal security as its primary political plank for the next general elections. On Tuesday, it promptly termed the Rampur terrorist attack a result of UPA’ soft policies.

“This is possibly the first premeditated fidayeen attack in the country’s hinterland, indicating that Jehadi outfit modules have positioned themselves deep inside the country and are not just confined to borders of Kashmir. This vindicates the BJP’s repeated assertion that a large number of sleeper calls have stealthily positioned themselves in the last three years taking advantage of soft polices of the UPA Government. This action shows a complete lackadaisical and indifferent approach of the UPA Government to fight terrorism,” party spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy said.

The BJP had used internal security as an effective tool for creating an emotional frenzy in its favour in the recent Gujarat election. Chief Minister Narendra Modi had portrayed himself as a strong administrator on hot pursuit of terrorists. The delay in the execution of Afzal Guru, a convict in the Parliament attack case, was interpreted as a weakness of the Congress and the entire campaign evidently struck a chord with the voters. Buoyed by the Assembly election results, a strategy session of the party decided to extend the campaign on a national scale in a build-up to the to next elections.

Rudy claimed that when the BJP was in power, it had acted hard on terrorist attacks, and aggressively detected and located terrorist modules, “bursting and immobilising more than 200 of them.” He said the UPA Government was “unfazed with the spate of terrorist attacks on Ayodhya, Varanasi and Jaunpur and recent simultaneous serial blasts in Court complexes of Lucknow, Varanasi and Faizabad... Not a single accused has been apprehended...”