We make no distinction: PM

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, APRIL 25. In a major intervention, which the Prime Minister Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, mistakenly termed as her maiden speech in the Lok Sabha before correcting himself quickly, the Congress(I) president, Ms. Sonia Gandhi, today questioned almost every aspect of the BJP-led Government's policies but reserved the sharpest barbs for its ``hidden agenda'' saying the Congress(I) would be ``unrelenting'' in resisting attacks on secularism.

In a spirited attack, while speaking on the motion of thanks to the President's address which the House later adopted by voice vote, the Leader of the Opposition said secularism had been consistently under assault ever since the National Democratic Alliance Government came to power. Though the Prime Minister had tried occasionally to ``deflect'' these assaults it was ``not out of deep conviction, but out of compulsion to protect the very fragile coalition he heads.'' Her party, she declared reading from a heavily marked text, would stand up to all ``overt'' and ``covert'' attempts to ``subvert'' secularism, the ``bedrock'' of the Indian Constitution.

The Prime Minister, speaking immediately afterwards, quickly got the issue out of the way with the familiar BJP argument that his party and Government were as secular as anybody else and no single party could claim to be the torchbearer of secularism. But ``our'' secularism - presumably unlike the Congress(I)'s - treated all religions equally without making any distinctions. ``This is the basis and foundation of our secularism'', he said.

The recent attacks on Christian missionaries in Uttar Pradesh were ``unfortunate'' and the Home Ministry had asked the State Government to investigate and punish the guilty, he said.

The opposite poles of Indian politics couldn't have stood out in sharper contrast as Ms. Sonia Gandhi and Mr. Vajpayee, representing two different generations and two different political cultures, slugged it out - one somewhat tentative but sharply focussed, the other brimming with confidence but diffused to the point of being evasive. The Left parties, in fact, walked out protesting that the Prime Minister had ducked the most important issue of the day: the recent price hike and its impact, particularly on the very poor.

Ms. Sonia Gandhi, in her 25-minute speech, criticised the Government's economic agenda saying the all-round hike in prices, plus the cuts in subsidies, had exposed its ``anti-poor'' bias. The Prime Minister, in his reply, skirted the issue of prices altogether, barring a reference to the cut in fertilizer subsidies. The subsidies, he said, were benefiting the industry more than the farmers and accused the Congress(I) of changing its stand on the issue.

He sought a political consensus on economic reforms and strongly defended the proposed constitutional review assuring members that the basic structure of the Constitution ``which includes secularism'' would not be altered.

The ambience varied from pindrop silence when Ms. Gandhi spoke to near chaos when the Prime Minister got up to rebut her charges.

The Prime Minister, however, didn't seem to mind and even indulged the Opposition, telling an impatient Mr. Madhavrao Scindia: ``Ek Gwalior wale ko doosre Gwalior wale ke saath yeh nahin karna chahiye'' (fellow Gwalior-ians should not do this to each other). In the end, what lingered was not so much the rhetoric from the two sides as the style: and, for once, the ``Veterans XI'' looked a little jaded.

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