Scoffing speculations in political circles about a possible rift between Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the backdrop of 2G spectrum controversy, the Congress on Tuesday emphatically denied any such misgivings. The party asserted that the understanding between the two “can never be better than as it exists today”.
Speaking to reporters on a whole range issues pertaining to the stalemate in Parliament between the ruling UPA and the obstinate united opposition over the formation of a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) probe into the alleged 2G spectrum allocation scam, AICC general secretary and chairman of party’s media department Janardhan Dwivedi said, “Doubts were created that there is a rift between the Prime Minister and Congress president. But the propaganda is false. The understanding between the two can never be better than as it exists today.”
Mr Dwivedi further asserted that Congress president herself has cleared the misgivings while addressing the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) meeting on Monday. “She made it clear that Congress is completely behind the prime Minister,” he said.
The Congress leader also reminded the BJP that the leaders of the NDA formation should recollect the relationship between the then Prime Minister and the then deputy Prime Minister during their tenure.
Interestingly, the Congress leader’s statement comes a day after the entire Winter Session of Parliament was washed off due to intransigent stand of the ruling UPA and the entire Opposition on the JPC issue.
The reassurance of Mr Dwivedi also comes ahead of the three-day plenary session of the Congress beginning December 18 in Delhi in which party leaders from all across the country would want to know the reasons for not conceding the JPC demand of the Opposition.
Moreover, asserting that Congress is all set to aggressively counter the Opposition campaign against the government on corruption issue, Mr Dwivedi said, “The party is ready for every challenge and will go to people more actively in the coming days and expose the motive and the intention of the opposition.”
Attacking the Opposition and especially the BJP for the impasse in Parliament, Mr Dwivedi said, “The session that has just passed will perhaps be remembered differently...Never before any Opposition in the country has behaved this way as it did during this session.”
Regretting that a debate on corruption was not allowed, the Congress leader said, this was in a way an “insult” to Parliament. “An institution like CAG was not trusted fully. Even PAC was not trusted, whose chairman is as per norms is a leader from the Opposition.