New Delhi:
Senior BJP leader LK Advani has said the credit for the controversial ordinance to protect convicted lawmakers being killed goes to President Pranab Mukherjee and not Rahul Gandhi.
He also hints in his blog that Rahul Gandhi's public denouncement of the ordinance, was his mother Sonia Gandhi's attempt at damage control, as the President would have returned it.
"It's Pranabda, not Rahul, who saved the situation," says the title of Mr Advani's blog on his site today. He praises the President for not being a 'rubber stamp like other Congressmen who had earlier occupied the high office'.
"All that Rahul Gandhi had said ...was that the Ordinance was complete nonsense and deserved to be torn and thrown away. What was there in this outburst which the PM could possibly discuss with his Cabinet?" Mr Advani wrote.
(Read his full blog)
The government on Wednesday withdrew the ordinance, which was seen as a blatant attempt at overriding a Supreme Court order disqualifying convicted MPs and MLAs. The BJP had accused the government of hurriedly bringing the ordinance to protect politicians like Lalu Yadav, a loyal ally who was jailed in a corruption case yesterday. The ordinance allowed convicted lawmakers to stay on while their appeal was being heard in a higher court.
The 85-year-old BJP veteran said the ruling Congress was 'alarmed' after the President, following a meeting with BJP leaders, called three ministers to discuss his own reservations on the ordinance.
"At the end of our meeting (with the President) we got the clear impression that he was convinced that the situation merited his intervention...The President returning the Ordinance to the Government unsigned would have been a major setback for Government," Mr Advani said.
"It is then perhaps that Soniaji 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."
Mr Advani referred to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's comment to NDTV's Barkha Dutt on his way back from the US. "He stressed that the Ordinance had been cleared at a meeting of senior Congress leaders including the Party President Sonia Gandhi, held on September 21. The victory that has come to the country by withdrawal of this illegal and immoral ordinance has thus been thanks only to the President."