Senior BJP leader lK Advani on Sunday said that the removal of Union Ministers PK Bansal and Ashwani Kumar at the behest of Congress president Sonia Gandhi has raised question about Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s prerogative to decide his Cabinet. In his latest blog, Advani cited media reports about Sonia Gandhi ‘sacking’ two ‘PM’s men’ and asked whether Singh had “abdicated” his right to decide his own Cabinet.
“Sheer self-respect demands that the PM calls it a day, and orders an early general election,” he said.Congress has, however, dismissed reports that the action against the two was taken at the insistence of Gandhi and said it was a “joint decision” of the Prime Minister and Gandhi. Advani also wondered that if corruption provoked indignation in Bangalore, why would it not cause the same feeling in New Delhi.
Critical of the party’s handling of Karnataka affairs and on the complete rout of the party from power in the southern State, Advani maintained it had been “absolutely opportunistic” and said BJP’s response to the crisis there was “not at all a minor indiscretion”.
Advani said Karnataka poll results did not come as a surprise to him. However, the result has been an eye-opener to both his party and the Congress about not “taking the common man for granted”.
“I feel sorry that we have lost in Karnataka. But I am not surprised. The surprise would have been if we had won,” Advani said on his blog. He said, “I think the Karnataka results have a profound lesson for the BJP. In a way it has a lesson also for the Congress. The common lesson for both of us is: let’s not take the common man for granted.”
On the party’s handling of corruption during BS Yeddyurappa’s regime, Advani said had BJP taken immediate firm action, “the course of events would have been quite different”.
“But for several months, frantic efforts went on somehow to keep placating him by condoning his peccadilloes,” the BJP veteran said, adding that the justification given was that if the party did not adopt a ‘pragmatic’ approach it would lose its only Government in the south. Advani said that the BJP did not throw out Yeddyurappa but it was he who broke away to form his own party.
He referred to the reports that how Sonia Gandhi overlooked “shortcomings” in Virbhadra Singh and earned an advantage in Himachal Pradesh, but the BJP took pride in taking a principled stand in Karnataka. “The consequence is that the BJP has lost even the toehold it had acquired in the south,” he said.