‘Tainted’ ministers: NDA to petition Prez

After a meeting of NDA leaders, Fernandes announced that they will seek an appointment with the President tomorrow. However, he ruled out a boycott of the tainted ministers in Paliament in the manner in which he was boycotted by the Congress and the Left. He said: ‘‘We do not follow the culture of the Congress and the Marxists.’’ Fernandes also endorsed the BJP decision to instal Advani as Leader of the Opposition.

When asked about the UPA offer of deputy speakership to the NDA, Fernandes said the alliance would follow the convention of the ruling party getting the speakership and the Opposition the deputy speakership. He said, the NDA wished to ensure that ‘‘conventions are not broken’’.

Those present at the 90-minute meeting included Vajpayee, Advani, BJP president Venkaiah Naidu, party leaders Jaswant Singh, Sushma Swaraj and V.K. Malhotra, Arjun Charan Sethi (BJD), Mamata Banerjee (Nationalist Trinamool Congress), Chandrakant Khaire (Shiv Sena), and P.C. Thomas (Indian Federal Democratic Party). There was no representation from the Akali Dal.

An agency report from Amritsar, quoting Akali Dal president Parkash Singh Badal, said the Dal had staked its claimed for the post of deputy speaker for its MP from Phillaur Charanjit Singh Atwal. He is a former speaker of the Punjab Assembly.

Fernandes replied in the negative, when asked if the meeting discussed any names for the job. While within the BJP, another name — Satya Narain Jatiya — is doing the rounds for the post of deputy Speaker, Malhotra got ruled out after his nomination as the deputy leader of the BJP in the Lok Sabha.