New Delhi: BJP leader L K Advani on Friday credited President Pranab Mukherjee for the withdrawal of the ordinance on convicted lawmakers and slammed Rahul Gandhi for “rubbing off the authority” of the Prime Minister and the UPA with his strong words.
“The victory that has come to the country by withdrawal of this illegal and immoral ordinance has thus been thanks only to the Rashtrapati, who has proved that UPA would err seriously if it assumed that like most other Congressmen who had earlier occupied the high office of President, he too would remain a rubber stamp President,” Advani said in his latest blog posting.
Advani felt that “Rahul’s victory was really confined to rubbing off UPA’s authority, and not merely the Prime Minister’s. “So, the nonsense slur hurled at the Cabinet approved ordinance cannot apply only to the PM and his Ministers. Soniaji must also share responsibility.”
The summoning of Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde, Law Minister Kapil Sibal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kamalnath, therefore, had made it clear that things had started moving, the senior BJP leader said.
“It seems these Ministers were told that the President had reservations about signing the Ordinance. This must have alarmed the Ministers. The President returning the ordinance to the Government unsigned would have been a major setback for Government,” he said.
Slamming Rahul Gandhi for his use of words such as “nonsense” and that the ordinance should be “torn” and “thrown away”, Advani said Rahul’s objective would have been fully served if he had simply said that the “decision taken by the Government needs to be reviewed”. (PTI)