A delegation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) met President Pranab Mukherjee and urged him to advance the next general elections, considering the “unprecedented crisis facing the country’s economy.”

Trying to draw the former Finance Minister’s attention to the issue, the BJP said that the present Finance Minister P. Chidambaram blamed his immediate predecessor for the crisis and the Prime Minister kept quiet.

“The Government of India, as usual, is in denial. Not satisfied with this, it blames everybody else for the current crisis, except itself. It blames the Opposition, the State Governments, the Reserve Bank of India and the global factors,” the party said in a memorandum.

The BJP said the country could ill-afford, at this moment of crisis, a Government which is paralysed, a Prime Minister who never speaks, a Finance Minister who wrongly blames his immediate predecessor who is unable to defend himself, a supreme leader who does not care about where the money will come from and a bureaucracy, which is frozen and unable to act.

“The Ministers of this Government are unbridled and working at cross-purposes. The relationship of the Government of India with the State Governments, specially the non-UPA-ruled States and with the Opposition parties, is at its nadir,” the memorandum said.

The BJP leaders urged the President to end the prevailing uncertainty by advising this Government to seek a fresh mandate at the earliest and not later than the State elections due in the next three months.

> jigeesh.am@thehindu.co.in