Congress, BJP confrontation over FDI escalates
The confrontation over FDI in retail in Parliament escalated today with Congress asserting it has majority in the House while BJP rejected Government's plea for toning down the adjournment motion seeking censure of the ruling coalition.
For the seventh straight day, both the Houses of Parliament remained paralysed without transacting any business with the entire opposition demanding rollback of the controversial decision.
Like on the Indo-US nuclear deal, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appears to be firm on going ahead with the decision on which the party today came out in total support.
And the treasury bench managers are understood to be working on the doubting allies like DMK and the Trinamool Congress, which have expressed their opposition to the FDI decision.
The government's attempt late in the night to persuade BJP to tone down the adjournment motion seeking censure of the government failed.
Senior BJP leader L.K. Advani told government's trouble shooter Pranab Mukherjee that the wording of the adjournment motion was 'non-negotiable'. Either rollback the decision or accept the motion and face a vote in Parliament, Advani is believed to have told Mukherjee.
The Congress top brass met twice in the day at the Prime Minister's residence and discussed the strategy to face the Opposition onslaught in Parliament.
'No decision', a senior leader said after the two-hour long second round of meeting of the Core Group presided over by Congress President Sonia Gandhi and attended by senior ministers.
There was a feeling in the government that while genuine apprehensions of the allies and the people should be addressed, the government cannot be seen as going back on a decision which has been taken after a lot of deliberation in the area of reforms.
"What Congress is saying that the Government, as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, has taken a well-thought out decision.
And the Congress fully supports the decision," he said when asked whether he was ruling out any rollback.
"We have the numbers. If we agreed to accept an adjournment motion on black money. We would not have done it without counting our flock," party spokesperson Manish Tewari told reporters.
"They will back the government when push comes to a shove," he said about the allies and accused the BJP of playing "opportunistic" politics.
Earlier in the day, Mukherjee met Gandhi before he addressed party MPs on various issues including FDI in retail, black money and price rise.
Tomorrow Commerce Minister Anand Sharma will brief the party MPs on the FDI decision to allay their apprehensions.
Yet another Congress MP Pravin Singh Aaron from Uttar Pradesh today expressed his reservations over the FDI issue and wrote to Prime Minister.
However, Kerala PCC President Ramesh Chennithala, who had strongly opposed the decision, was attacked by senior party leader P C Chacko, who said he welcomes FDI in retail.
He criticised Chennithala saying the issue was not not discussed in party forum in Kerala before he came out to attack it.
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