BHARATIYA JANATA PARTY
Parliamentary Wing
Press Conference addressed by
SHRI L.K. ADVANI
Leader of the Opposition (Lok Sabha)

New Delhi – 7 December 2007

The Winter Session of Parliament has ended today. No other parliamentary session since May 2004 has so thoroughly exposed the fissures and the farcical nature of the ruling coalition as this one did. And never before had the NDA so clearly succeeded in cornering both the Congress and the Communists, separately as well as jointly.

Regrettably, discussion on the Indo-US nuclear deal under Rule 184 (or equivalent in the Rajya Sabha), which would have entailed voting, was not permitted. The debate, nevertheless, exposed the CPM’s hypocrisy as it was content to bark without biting – a strategy they have perfected in the last three years.

1. The debate also exposed the isolation of the Congress. Even its allies in the UPA put up an indifferent, half-hearted defence of the deal with their representatives making perfunctory and unconvincing arguments in its support.
   
2. When MPs belonging to the NDA, Left parties and UNPA “voted with their feet” particularly in the Rajya Sabha on December 5, dissatisfied with Mr Pranab Mukherjee’s reply to the debate, almost two-thirds of the House got emptied, clearly revealing the “Sense of the House” on the deal.

Congress president Smt. Sonia Gandhi’s demonizing of a democratically elected chief minister as “maut ka saudagar” (merchant of death) is a provocation of the gravest kind. Not only is it an insult to the people of Gujarat, but also unprecedented even in the Congress party’s own sordid history of vote-bank politics. It is a personalized attack, and betrays a perverse mind, especially since there has been practically no terrorist incident in Gujarat in the last five years, whereas almost all Congress-ruled states (Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, Assam, Jammu & Kashmir) have seen gruesome terrorist killings of hundreds of innocent people.

The BJP has taken objection to Smt. Sonia Gandhi’s provocative statement. We are yet to hear if the Election Commission has issued a notice to her. We hope there will be no double standards in this matter.

The BJP is confident that the people of Gujarat will give a fitting reply to a party that is led by those who justify, through their calculated silence, the anti-national crimes of the likes of Sohrabuddin and Mohammed Afzal.

However, going beyond the confines of Gujarat elections, I sincerely appeal to Smt. Sonia Gandhi not to make such provocative statements. I am making this appeal in the national interest and for the good of Indian democracy.

On the carnage in Nandigram by the CPM’s armed cadre, the Congress was ambivalent. Home Minister Shivraj Patil failed to convincingly answer a single question raised by the NDA.

1. The Congress chose to remain silent on Governor Gopal Gandhi’s anguished remarks describing the CPM’s “reconquest” of Nandigram as “unlawful and unacceptable” or the Calcutta High Court’s stinging indictment of the firing on March 14 as “unconstitutional”.
   
2. The Home Minister refused to reply to the point made repeatedly by the NDA that instead of using the state machinery to pacify the disturbed situation, the CPM had let loose a private army to extract revenge on its political opponents.

We saw a worrisome trend in the Winter Session of Parliament in the form of the government’s repeated attempts to bypass the Standing Committees in getting bills passed. The Bill to take over AIIMS was bulldozed through the both Houses, passed by the Rajya Sabha amid din and no debate. Worse, the President’s assent was obtained overnight during the weekend solely in order to tie the Supreme Court’s hands.

The Government further buckled under the pressure of the communists to get two Constitution amendment bills for granting autonomous status to the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council passed without referring them to a Parliamentary Standing Committee. The NDA successfully thwarted this move.

In another major embarrassment, the Opposition forced the hands of Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss to withdraw the Jawaharlal Institute of Post-Graduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER), Puducherry, Bill 2007.

The Winter Session has thus demonstrated the utter fragility of the UPA Government, which survives only through a series of compromises at the cost of principle, ideology, conviction and governance.