| Rahul Gandhi calls Ordinance 'nonsense', PM says will address issue | | | agencies
Washington, Sept 27: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who was apparently taken by surprise by Rahul Gandhi's attack on the Ordinance on lawmakers, on Friday said that he would discuss the Ordinance with the Cabinet after his return to New Delhi on October 01.
"Issues raised by Rahul Gandhi will be considered by the Cabinet on my return to India," the PM said. In a statement, the PM said that Gandhi has also written a letter to him on the issue besides making a statement.
The Ordinance pertaining to the Representation of the People Ac has been a matter of much public debate and the government is seized of all these developments, added the PM.
Dr Singh is in the US to attend the United Nations General Assembly.
Gandhi's blunt denunciation of the controversial Ordinance happened in New Delhi while the Prime Minister was sleeping in his suite in the Four Seasons Hotel here.
Singh's aides were woken up by the media seeking reaction to Gandhi's attack.
The PM's aides, who were preparing for Dr Singh's meeting with US President Barack Obama later in the day, huddled to deal with the embarrassing situation arisen back home.
As soon as Rahul Gandhi dropped a political bombshell on an unsuspecting government, Sanjaya Baru, former press advisor to the PM, said that Dr Singh should quit in the wake of the "insulting" remarks by the Congress vice president.
Making a dramatic appearance at the Press Club of India this afternoon where Congress spokesman Ajay Maken was painstakingly defending the Ordinance, Gandhi had said that the Ordinance that the government had sent up to the President to protect convicted lawmakers from disqualification was "wrong", should be "torn up and thrown away" and it was time to stop "this nonsense".
In what came as a major embarassment for the Manmohan Singh government, Gandhi told surprised journalists that "what the government has done is wrong". He walked into the club as Maken, chairman of Congress communication department, was in the middle of his press interaction.
The dramatic prouncements were immediately termed as "grandstanding", "a charade" and aimed at "damage control" by the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, while the Left leader Gurudas Dasgupta said he was "baffled" by Rahul Gandhi's comment. |
|
