The Hindu : Front Page : It looks like a deal between two individuals: Advani

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jul 22, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Front Page

Front Page

It looks like a deal between two individuals: Advani

Anita Joshua

NEW DELHI: Repeatedly arguing that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had invited the floor test upon himself, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha L.K. Advani on Monday asserted that the Bharatiya Janata Party wanted to defeat the government, not destabilise it.

Leading the Opposition attack on the government, Mr. Advani sought to draw a distinction between defeating and destabilising a government and said it was not in the BJP’s nature to destabilise governments.

The United Progressive Alliance government “is like a patient in the ICU room. The first question everyone asks is whether he [patient] is going to survive or not,” Mr. Advani said, adding that the current dispensation had been paralysed for nearly a year now.

On the withdrawal of support by the Left parties, Mr. Advani maintained that they could not be held responsible for the UPA being reduced to a minority.

Quoting the Prime Minister describing the “special session” as a “distraction” that was not allowing the government to carry on with its job, he said: “If anyone is responsible, it is your government and you personally. And, of course, the Congress president without whose approval you would not have been allowed to take a single step.”

Of the view that the UPA government, the Prime Minister and the Congress president do not believe in coalition dharma, the National Democratic Alliance’s prime ministerial candidate reminded the ruling benches of how the BJP had brought round its allies on the need to make India a nuclear weapon state. “Only after they agreed did we include it in the National Agenda for governance and conduct the nuclear tests of 1998,” he said.

The BJP leader said the Prime Minister’s determination to push ahead with the nuclear deal made it look like a deal between two individuals and not between two sovereign nations. Maintaining that his party was not averse to a close strategic alliance with the U.S., he said the NDA would re-negotiate the deal if voted to power.

Mr. Advani accused the UPA of four years of misrule and was particularly critical of its inability to deal with terrorism.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Front Page