Responding to Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh's comment that Amethi MP Rahul Gandhi would make a good Prime Minister, the BJP on Saturday said if Mr. Gandhi indeed possessed the requisite qualities, then he should be given the country's top job.
“Let him be [the PM]... after all, it is just a question of changing chairs,” said BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad. The BJP leader said he had “not yet heard Mr. Gandhi making a complete speech in Parliament ever since the latter became an MP.” Such a wishful move would once and for all “expose Mr. Gandhi's political ineptness.”
The BJP leader said the Congress' intention to fight corruption was suspect, and declared the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government was the most corrupt since Independence.
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The Opposition party reiterated its four-point poser demanding the reasons behind Congress president Sonia Gandhi's silence on 2G spectrum allocation, the Commonwealth Games, the Adarsh Housing Society and the indictment of Delhi Urban Development Minister Raj Kumar Chauhan by the Lokayukta for “abuse of power.”
While criticising the Congress' lack of direction in drafting the Lokpal Bill, Mr. Prasad denied that the BJP lacked an independent view on the issue despite backing civil society representatives in Anna Hazare's team and yoga guru Baba Ramdev.
“We [the BJP] have a view. But first, the Central government better be clear about what it exactly wants. We will take up the issue on the floor of Parliament,” said Mr. Prasad.
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He refuted allegations of the party's inability to fill the political vacuum, yielding space to non-political players stating that the BJP, led by senior leaders like L.K. Advani, had been the first to raise the issue of recovery of black money stashed away in foreign bank accounts.
Mr. Prasad termed the June 3 police firing incident at Forbesganj in Bihar's Araria district “unfortunate,” but urged rival political parties “not to play politics over victims' bodies.”