New Delhi, Aug 23: Leader of the opposition in Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj today ruled out en masse resignations by BJP MPs either from Parliament or from parliamentary committees in view of the current deadlock over Coalgate issue.
Sushma Swaraj told newspersons in Parliament complex today that “we don't know what was discussed in the UPA coordination committee meeting yesterday. We hve not resigned from any parliamentary committee. The newspaper report about the move for en masse resignations by BJP is completely baseless.”
Sushma Swaraj's denial comes in the context of today's Times of India report which said the UPA leaders last night discussed the possibility of BJP MPs may resign en masse from parliament over the Coalgate issue.
The TOI report had said, the current standoff inside Parliament over the Coalgate scam has led to speculations among a section of UPA leaders that the main opposition party may decide to resign en masse to force the government prepone the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
According to the TOI report, at the meeting of UPA coordination committee on Wednesday evening, the leaders, in the presence of UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, took note of the fact that with at least 20 months of the current Lok Sabha's tenure still left, byelections will have to be held to fill up the 114 vacancies, if all BJP MPs decide to resign en masse.
In that case, the leaders suggested that the UPA should contest these “mini byelections” in order to snatch the seats from the BJP, the report said.
“If we manage to wrest seats from them,we will have made a strong political point in the build-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections”, the report quoted a source.
Present at the UPA meeting included NCP boss Sharad Pawar, Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee, finance minister P Chidambaram, Rashtriya Lok Dal supremo Ajit Singh, DMK's T R Baalu, National Conference's Farooq Abdullah and Indian Union Muslim League's E Ahamed.
Although BJP has been feeling frustrated with what it calls Congresss reluctance,the idea of taking the step of wholesale resignations from the Lok Sabha has been confined to a few hotheads, the TOI report had said .Yet,the increasingly bellicose equations between the two sides have enhanced the premium on aggression.
In the past, over 100 MPs had quit in 1989 over Bofors scam. But that was in the final year of Rajiv Gandhi's term.
