With an eye on the polls, this is expected to serve a two fold political objective. The Congress’ obvious plans to court Muslims with its “minority appeasement” policy could be put in disarray by successfully portraying the UPA as subservient to the United States. On the other hand, with terrorist attacks taking place over a wider area, middle class voters could be turned against the UPA if it was shown as being soft on terror rather than having “zero tolerance” on the issue, leading to the BJP’s own urban consolidation.

As party leader Venkaiah Naidu points out, the government clearly has an agenda while trying to give special minority status to Aligarh Muslim University, setting up the Sachar Committee and announcing that minorities, especially Muslims, have the first right to resources.

Keen to bolster the view that the BJP alone has a comprehensive policy-oriented approach to internal security, the party’s campaign will show how on Pakistan, Jammu and Kashmir and the Indo-US nuclear deal, the UPA government is dictated by the United States. On Ulfa and Naxalite violence, on the other hand, it will highlight how it is guided by political calculations and, in fact, does not even realise how serious the situation is. In sum, the BJP’s campaign will convey that when it comes to internal security, the UPA government does not inspire confidence and is guided by anything but national interest, making it dangerous and unreliable.

Says Leader of the Opposition and party stalwart L.K. Advani, “We will go to the people and tell them that all sorts of compromises are being made with Pakistan under pressure from the United States.”

The proposal to have a joint mechanism on terror with Pakistan, which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced in Havana during the Non-Aligned Meet, is according to the party an illustration of how the United States is leaning on India to accommodate Pakistan.

The issue also is of showing that the government was intent on dealing with the crisis, and the POTA law was one such way of demonstrating that. As BJP president Rajnath Singh says, there was always a need for a law against terrorism, but after doing away with POTA, the government did not make an alternative legislation.

According to BJP general secretary Arun Jaitley, who is also secretary of the party’s parliamentary board, internal security was being linked to vote bank politics which was evident in Kashmir. “It is completely wrong to talk about demilitarisation in Kashmir, because that would be appeasing a political ally, which is dangerous for the country’s sovereignty,” he says.

The implication is that the government could now be heading for a “second round of mistakes” in Kashmir, where coalition partners Congress and the PDP do not see eye to eye. And where the government could have been stronger, it is deliberately weakening its own case as the intelligence coordination group, the technological committees, and the task force on intelligence that could have been helpful and were so during the NDA regime, are now “defunct”.

In the coming months, the crux of the BJP’s internal security offensive against the UPA will contain the following points: the Manmohan Singh government is soft on terror, it is not taking note of infiltration from Bangladesh and Nepal now that fencing on the West is paying off, it has not brought in a strong anti-terror law, it has not been able to work out terror cases quickly, and apart from failing in Jammu and Kashmir, it has been unsuccessful in dealing with Ulfa and the Maoists. In short, the management of internal security is the UPA’s “largest single failure”.

LINING UP THE AMMO

BJP says UPA has failed on internal security because:

• There is “virtually no reference” to it in the CMP

• Internal security is tackled on vote-bank considerations

• Rather than healing touch in J&K, the coalition partners are “at war”

• Even the intelligence chief is forced to ask for tougher laws

• Government slow to react to growing strength and militarisation of Maoists

• Slow investigations a result of government treating it as non priority

According to BJP, government does not recognise:

• Indigenisation of terror, and the spreading network of terror

• Illegal immigration from Nepal and Bangladesh and the fact that terrorists could mix with local population

• Need to have stronger law after POTA has gone