Conduct elections like FICCI does — Vajpayee

NEW DELHI, NOV 20: Inhis characteristic style, though with noticeably shorter pauses, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, had FICCI’s industrialists is splits while addressing their 72nd annual session today. Tired after the long and arduous electioneering, Vajpayee began saying that the smooth manner in which FICCI and other such associations conduct their elections made him envious.

“You even elect the successor president now itself,” he quipped. And before the audience could recover, he wisecracked that he didn’t want India “imitating FICCI in terms of (elections) taking place every year!”With outgoing FICCI president Sudhir Jalan gently reminding Vajpayee that several of the promises he’d made from this very dias last year still remained largely unfulfilled, this time around Vajpayee chose not to make any grand promises. On his ambitious 7,000 kilometer National Highway Project, which was largely unviable even when he announced it last year, Vajpayee contented himself by saying this would beaddressed by the reconstituted Group on Infrastructure.

And, yes, he was aware, he told Jalan, that despite his assurances last year, many problems still persisted in telecom, such as the powers of the TRAI, replacement of the Indian Telegraph Act of 1885 with a more modern one which reflects the new convergence in technology. All this, Vajpayee said in his only announcement for the day, would be addressed by a group headed by Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha.

That, incidentally, was another major departure from FICCI sessions in the past. For the first time in recent years, the Prime Minister was accompanied by the Finance Minister for an annual session.