New Delhi, June 7: In a blistering attack on the government, the BJP today equated it with a corporate entity in which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is acting as the “CEO” on the orders of the “owner” of the company and said there were “structural contradictions” in the ruling dispensation.
Senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley claimed that the Prime Minister has office but “not authority” while those having the power were not accountable, in an apparent referrence to Sonia Gandhi.
“The structure of the government is rare in the whole world. In any democratic country, the Prime Minister is the leader of the country. Here you are running the show on the structure of a private company. You have a professional CEO and the owner is somebody else,” Jaitley said addressing a party gathering here.
Taking a dig at the Prime Minister, the BJP leader claimed that whenever there is any controversy, Singh says that he was not aware.
In an indirect attack on Gandhi, he said the powers of the government lies with a particular family which does not have any accountability.
“There is no power with the leadership of the government. There is office but no authority. There is another leadership who has power but no accountability. And that is why this leadership keeps itself away from the responsibilities as per convenience,” he said. “In this kind of a structure a Gandhi can never commit a mistake...A government cannot run like this. The Prime Minister is getting invisible,” he said.
Arguing his point, the Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha said in the event of a “mistake blame is always put on others and it is said the family was very angry. Terming the government as “headless chicken”, Jaitely said there were two views in the government on how to deal with Ramdev's agitation.
“One view was that there should be a political settlement of Ramdev's agitation through talks. That is why four ministers including Pranab Mukherjee went to the airport. The other view was to handle it through police and by use of force. There was fight among the two,” he said.
Jaitley claimed Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had favoured a political settlement of the issue while Home Minister P Chidambaram wanted use of force.
“The Finance Minister was one view while the Home Minister had a different view. That is why I termed the government as a headless chicken. There is no statecraft in this government,” he said.
Slamming the government for the crackdown on Ramdev and his followers, Jaitley said he never saw any incident where shelling of tear gas was resorted to on a crowd in a closed enclosure.
“The Prime Minister's statement was most unfortunate. I want to ask him what is the justification for resorting to tear gas shelling to a crowd in a closed enclosure. The official or the Minister who had decided about it does not have authority to remain in office,” he said.
Jaitley also criticised the government for not giving permission to Anna Hazare to protest in Jantar Mantar, saying the people's right to protest is being undermined. PTI
