Sonia Gandhi Attacks Vajpayee Govt for All-round Failure

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, August 19, 2003

Sonia Gandhi Attacks Vajpayee Govt for All-round Failure

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In a scathing attack on the Vajpayee government, Congress President Sonia Gandhi Monday said its days were numbered as its rule was marred by all-round failure, jeopardizing country's defence, denigrating key institutions of parliamentary democracy and mounting corruption.

Gandhi, who moved a no-confidence motion in the Lower House against the Vajpayee Government, dubbed the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) as "incompetent, insensitive, irresponsible and brazenly corrupt" during her one-hour speech.

Facing frequent interruptions and tongue-in-cheek remarks from the Treasury benches in a packed House, Gandhi held the government squarely responsible for "blatantly undermining the independence of our foreign policy."

She asked the Prime Minister why his Government was "impeding" the functioning of the Public Affair Council (PAC) by refusing to give it access to the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) report "which has examined some transactions relating to Operation Vijay" during Kargil war.

Gandhi, who is also leader of the Opposition, made it clear at the outset that she was not proposing the motion for "partisan reasons because parties are not important, nor are numbers of any consequence."

She was apparently referring to the outcome of the no-confidence motion being a foregone conclusion since the NDA was way ahead in the numbers game.

"Our indictment is comprehensive, just as their failures are complete," the Congress President said adding the no-trust motion was borne out of a "genuine disquiet over the capricious way in which this Government is conducting the business of governance."

In an obvious attack on Defence Minister George Fernandes, who is in the eye of the storm over the PAC-CVC issue, Gandhi said there was "obviously something terribly wrong with our defence."

She dubbed as an "inexcusable lapse" an amount of 240 billion rupees (5.22 billion US dollars) allocated for defence modernization remaining unspent which was around 30 percent of budgeted amount.

She also asked the Prime Minister to spell out India's stand on the presence of NATO forces in Afghanistan saying it was an unprecedented development and had profound significance.

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