Immoral ordinance withdrawn thanks to Pranab, not Rahul: Advani

New Delhi: BJP leader LK Advani today credited President Pranab Mukherjee for the withdrawal of the ordinance on convicted lawmakers and slammed Rahul Gandhi for “rubbing off the authority” of the Prime Minister and the UPA with his strong words. “The victory that has come to the country by withdrawal of this illegal and immoral ordinance has thus been thanks only to the Rashtrapati, who has proved that UPA would err seriously if it assumed that like most other Congressmen who had earlier occupied the high office of President, he too would remain a rubber stamp President,” Advani said in his latest blog posting. [caption id=“attachment_1153859” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  LK Advani. AP[/caption] Advani felt that “Rahul’s victory was really confined to rubbing off UPA’s authority, and not merely the Prime Minister’s. “So, the nonsense slur hurled at the Cabinet approved ordinance cannot apply only to the PM and his Ministers. Soniaji must also share responsibility” Advani said that after the BJP delegation met the President on September 26 objecting the ordinance, “we got the clear impression that he was convinced that the situation merited his intervention”. The summoning of Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde, Law Minister Kapil Sibal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kamalnath, therefore, had made it clear that things had started moving, the senior BJP leader said. “It seems these Ministers were told that the President had reservations about signing the Ordinance. This must have alarmed the Ministers. The President returning the ordinance to the Government unsigned would have been a major setback for Government,” he said. Slamming Rahul Gandhi for his use of words such as “nonsense” and that the ordinance should be “torn” and “thrown away”, Advani said Rahul’s objective would have been fully served if he had simply said that the “decision taken by the Government needs to be reviewed”. Noting that Rahul did not give a single argument why he felt the Ordinance was wrong, Advani wondered “what was there in this outburst which the PM could possibly discuss with his Cabinet”. He said that after the President got into the act, “It is then perhaps that Soniaji may have thought of doing some damage control using Rahul for the purpose”. Advani described the whole incident of bringing an ordinance on convicted lawmakers and then withdrawing it as “yet another ugly chapter in the unflattering history of the UPA government” which has now come to an end. He also criticised the media for giving credit to Rahul Gandhi for the withdrawal of the ordinance, saying the press has become “superficial” in its reporting these days. “Rahul Gandhi had not given a single argument why he felt the ordinance was wrong,” the senior BJP leader said. Though Advani has been discrete about what transpired when the BJP delegation met the President he indicated that Mukherjee did not appear happy with the ordinance. “At the end of our meeting we got the clear impression that he was convinced that the situation merited his intervention,” Advani said in his blog. Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley had accompanied Advani when he met the President. Castigating Rahul for using harsh words, Advani said, “It is obvious that no one advised him how precisely he was to carry out this task. The objective would have been fully served if Rahul had simply said that the decision taken by the government needs to be reviewed.” PTI