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Saturday, Jun 30, 2007
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Booklet on Pratibha Patil outlandish: Congress

Special Correspondent

Get your facts right and engage in a debate, Bharatiya Janata Party told

NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party’s booklet on the UPA Presidential candidate Pratibha Patil is “outlandish,” the Congress said on Friday.

“The desperation of the BJP is reflected in the concoction, cocktail of falsehood, half-truths and selective quotations which they are giving to mislead the nation. There are many examples… 20 per of the it [contents in the booklet] is from the Reserve Bank of India report and 80 per cent is a reproduction from a petition by employees of the Pratibha Mahila Cooperative Bank [in Maharashtra],” party spokesman Abhishek Singhvi said here.

The booklet was “cleverly woven” from these two documents, he said and questioned the BJP’s move to base it on charges made in a writ petition, which was not adjudicated.

The Congress said Ms. Patil was never the founder president of the bank and was its director for barely over a month. She did not hold even that post after 1994. “Is it a document to which the BJP thinks we should reply? Our advice is get the facts right and engage in a debate.”

Mr. Singhvi said the Congress did not want to drag the high constitutional post of President into a controversy by raising questions. “We never asked about the educational qualification of the Vice-President, or what he did to help his relatives, because we believe in democracy and that institutions take a long time to build but a few minutes to destroy.”

The BJP was afraid of fighting a straight electoral battle and was in search of an issue to keep its coalition, which was in tatters, but in the process was “causing incalculable harm.”

Natwar issue

About the BJP move to approach the Election Commission on intimidation of the former External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh, Mr. Singhvi said: “It is astonishing to make such an allegation.”

Under X Schedule, it was the right on the part of the Congress to seek the disqualification of Mr. Singh, a member of the Rajya Sabha, who campaigned for the Samajwadi Party in the recent Assembly elections, Mr. Singhvi said. Was the BJP was suggesting that a voter would be immune from this clause just because he was a voter in the Presidential election? Rajya Sabha Chairman Bhairon Singh Shekhawat was aware that the Congress was planning to seek the disqualification of Mr. Singh even before he endorsed Mr. Shekhawat’s candidature for President.

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