BJP leader LK Advani at a public meeting in Bargarh on Sunday. Telegraph picture

Bargarh, Oct. 23: Senior BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani today stepped up his party’s demand for bringing back the black money stashed away in foreign banks.

“Around Rs 2,50,000 crore of our money are locked up in foreign banks. If this money is brought back and invested in the villages, not a single village in the country will remain without power or drinking water,” Advani said while addressing a public meeting here during the first leg of his Jan Chetna Yatra in Orissa.

The BJP stalwart, whose automobile “rath” entered Orissa at Loharachatti, where he was seen off by Chhatisgarh chief minister Raman Singh, was in his elements repeatedly exhorting people to raise slogans with him, his latest coinage being “Bharat desh naya banayenge” (We will make a new India).

Advani, who was accompanied by senior party leaders Ravi Shankar Prasad and Vijay Goel, was unsparing in his criticism of Manmohan Singh-led UPA government, which he described as the most corrupt the country has seen since independence.

Calling upon the people to have zero tolerance for corruption, he also lashed out at the UPA regime for arresting BJP Lok Sabha MPs, who had actually acted as whistle blowers in the cash-for-vote scam and exposed corruption by the Congress.

He alleged that having been reduced to minority following withdrawal of support by the communists over the controversy sparked by the nuclear deal with the Americans, the Manmohan Singh government had sought to stay afloat by buying over the Opposition MPs. However, the BJP MPs exposed the wheeler dealers by bringing the cash offered to them into the Parliament.

Advani said though such people were treated as whistle blowers and protected by laws in many parts of the world, the Congress-led government arrested them. He said the scam, one of the biggest in the history of the country and a pointer to the kind of corruption threat the country was facing, gave him the inspiration for the Jan Chetna Yatra.

Advani, who did not pull his punches while attacking the UPA and the Congress, was effusive in his praise of state governments being led by the BJP or its alliance partners. “Look at the good work being done by the governments in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujrat, Uttarakhand and Bihar. They have set an example,” he said.

Though the turnout at Bargarh was not as impressive as the BJP stalwart would have expected, it was a responsive crowd, which kept egging on Advani who looked surprisingly fresh despite his long journey through Chhattisgarh. The BJP leader’s Jan Chetna Yatra would pass through Angul, Dhenkanal and Cuttack tomorrow, but his programme in Bhubaneswar on October 25 has been cancelled. According to his revised programme, he is scheduled to return to Delhi tomorrow following last meeting in Cuttack.