New Delhi, Sep 1 (IANS) Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the leadership of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) were losing their grip over governance, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said Wednesday.
‘Parliament’s monsoon session revealed that there is a drift in the functioning of the government,’ said a joint statement here Wednesday issued by Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley, leaders of opposition in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, respectively.
‘The prime minister’s ability to govern effectively and contain several crises has taken a beating. The home minister (P. Chidambaram) is no longer pursuing his anti-Maoist line. The finance minister (Pranab Mukherjee) appeared to have preferred Mamata Banerjee’s (Trinamool Congress leader) soft approach to Maoists,’ the BJP leaders said.
Addressing a press conference, organised to explain the party’s performance during the monsoon session, Sushma Swaraj said: ‘The government reversed its decision and diluted provisions of the Enemy Property (Amendment and Validation) Ordinance, 2010, within three weeks of its promulgation…’
This, she said, ‘clearly showed that it could act under communal pressures only to help one single beneficiary. It is a classical case of vote bank politics by the UPA.’
Jaitley said: ‘The BJP’s performance in the session was a synthesis of opposition, when required, and cooperation, when the situation so warranted.’
Saying that the ‘government cut a sorry figure many a time in the session’, he told reporters: ‘The PM decided not to actively participate in the session, except for a brief intervention on the nuclear liability bill.’
Stating that there was ‘absence of floor coordination in the UPA’, the BJP leaders said: ‘Individual ministers were concerned only with their own proposals and legislations’.
‘The government had antagonised various sections of the house, which led to a strong polarisation against several measures the government had proposed.’
Sushma Swaraj said the BJP had three different responses tailored according to issues in the monsoon session.
On issues like the nuclear liability bill, the BJP cooperated with the government after the bill was altered to the party’s satisfaction.
It stood with the opposition parties on the inflation issue and forced the government to move a resolution acknowledging the popular concern.
On some other issues, like the situation in Jammu and Kashmir and the Enemy Property Bill, the BJP stood independent of the government and the other opposition parties and articulated its ‘own independent line’, she said.
Asked whether the government was unable to carry the day and ‘save itself’ because of the BJP stand, Swaraj said the party had functioned as an ‘effective opposition party’.
Jaitley added that ‘parliamentary obstructionism and cooperation’ were part of the roles of an opposition party.
Deputy leader of the BJP in the Rajya Sabha S.S. Ahluwalia and BJP general secretary Ravi Shankar Prasad also addressed the press conference.
