Senior BJP leader lK Advani on Friday credited President Pranab Mukherjee for the withdrawal of the Ordinance on convicted lawmakers and indicated that Congress chief Sonia Gandhi could have been behind her son Rahul Gandhi’s outburst against the proposed legislation. Advani suggested that alarm bells started ringing in the UPA Government after Ministers gathered the impression that the President had reservation about signing the Ordinance.
“It is then perhaps that Sonia may have thought of doing some damage control using Rahul for the purpose. It is obvious, however, that no one advised him how precisely he was to carry out this task. The objective would have been fully served if Rahul had simply said that the decision taken by the Government needs to be reviewed,” Advani wrote in his blog on Friday.
He added, “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 (Mukherjee) too would remain a rubber stamp President!”
The BJP leader suggested Rahul’s victory was really confined to rubbing off UPA’s authority, and not merely the Prime Minister’s. “From day one, UPA has always meant Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi. So, the ‘nonsense’ slur hurled at the Cabinet approved Ordinance cannot apply only to the PM and his Ministers. Sonia must also share responsibility,” he said.
The veteran wrote, yet ‘another ugly chapter in the unflattering history of the UPA Government’ ended after Cabinet’s Wednesday decision to withdraw the Ordinance as well as the Bill pending before Parliament. Advani was also critical of the media for interpreting the rollback as Rahul Gandhi’s victory and said it was a comment on how superficial the media generally has become these days.
He pointed out that before departing from the United States, the PM had observed that he would discuss with his Cabinet on his return what the party’s vice-president has said about the Ordinance. “What was there in this outburst (of Rahul Gandhi) which the PM could possibly discuss with his CabinetIJ” Advani asked, arguing that Gandhi had not given a single argument why he felt the Ordinance was wrong.
In contrast, Advani said, BJP’s four-page long representation to the President on September 26 evening regarded the Ordinance not only unconstitutional and illegal, but also immoral, besides being procedurally wrong. “We met him (the President) at 5.30 pm that day and were with him for 45 minutes or so. At the end of our meeting we got the clear impression that he was convinced that the situation merited his intervention,” Advani wrote.
The BJP leader said it became clear that ‘things had started moving’ when shortly after the party delegation’s representation to the President, Mukherjee summoned Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde and law Minister Kapil Sibal. “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,” Advani wrote.