Congress suffering from a ‘siege mentality’: BJP

New Delhi: In a sharp reaction to Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s charges against the party, BJP today said the ruling party was suffering from a ‘siege mentality’ and hence using ‘abusive’ language against the opposition to deflect attention from its failures.

“The Congress Party is suffering from a mentality of a party under siege. Sonia Gandhi’s speech sounds like the reaction of a party under siege. Instead of answering calls from the people on core issues, we see her replicating the Congress conduct when they were under attack for the Bofors scandal,” BJP President Nitin Gadkari said in a statement.

The opposition party alleged that Congress had indulged in ‘pretended aggression’ to deflect attention from its failures in checking corruption, non-performance of the government by UPA-II, ‘alienation’ of the Congress from the people and ‘mistrust’ among its allies.

“By using abusive language, Ms. Gandhi has attempted to deflect attention from failures of UPA-II. We shall definitely raise these questions on the public fora and make sure the Congress will answer,” BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman said.

BJP also defended the stalemate in Parliament over 2-G Spectrum scam and rebutted Ms. Gandhi’s charge that the BJP had resorted to political blackmail.

“Mr. Pranab Mukherjee has also chosen to say in a resolution that the principal opposition party has led the Parliament towards almost a subversion of the Constitution. These are not the ways in which the ruling party is expected to come with its answers to the people,” Ms. Sitharaman said.