Atal speaks, echoes hawks on Sonia

Two weeks after the high drama surrounding Sonia Gandhi and the Prime Minister’s post, Atal Behari Vajpayee has broken his silence: She...

Two weeks after the high drama surrounding Sonia Gandhi and the Prime Minister’s post, Atal Behari Vajpayee has broken his silence: She should not, he said, have accepted the prime ministership.

Speaking to reporters after the BJP parliamentary party meeting here today, Vajpayee said that everyone knew his opinion on the matter. When pressed to re-state it, he said: ‘‘She should not have taken this post.’’

When one reporter said the former Prime Minister was perceived to have been unhappy with party leaders Sushma Swaraj and Uma Bharati over the manner in which they reacted to the prospect of Sonia’s taking up the position, Vajpayee avoided a categorical reply. All he said was, ‘‘It is an old issue now.’’

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The irony would be lost in the humourless world of politics but Vajpayee was today anointed in the same position Sonia now holds: The Bharatiya Janata Party, having amended its constitution, named him chairman of its parliamentary party.

And as L.K. Advani was elected the party’s leader in the Lok Sabha, ahead of his becoming Leader of the Opposition, Vajpayee spoke out on the election results. The defeat, he said, could be due to complacency and over-confidence but didn’t agree that the Gujarat violence was responsible. ‘‘Defeat is an issue for which reasons would have to be found though it has no link with violence’’, he said, adding that failure to identify the rival was also a factor.

He then sent out an upbeat message to the party: ‘‘We will come back. We have to come back.’’ To this end, he asked the new MPs to start working immediately to get re-elected. He called for an analysis of each and every constituency to see which social groups remained aloof from the party and develop a practical strategy to ‘‘increase our activty and influence among them.’’

In an apparent nod to popular percepotion for the BJP’s defeat, he said the party needed reach out to people at the grassroots level.

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Asked about his telephonic conversation with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf yesterday, Vajpayee said he (Musharraf) wanted the peace process to continue at the same pace as before.

He said, ‘‘Both sides should refrain from making statements as diplomacy cannot be carried on through statements, but through serious consultations.’’

Advani, who named Vijay Kumar Malhotra as deputy leader in the Lok Sabha and Sushma Swaraj as the deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha, termed the defeat unexpected and said one did not know when the next elections may be held.