Author: Ravindra Dani
Publication: Mumbai Tarun Bharat
(Marathi daily)
Date: August 27, 2004
The Government had taken the decision
to pass the budget without discussion after consulting the opposition parties.
But this decision was informed to the Prime Minister afterwards. Hence
the Prime Minister got extremely angry and he took out the anger on the
opposition leaders, it is reliably learnt. In this connection, the
PM feels that the leader of the Parliament and Defence Minister Pranab
Mukherjee and Gulam Nabi Azad kept him in the dark.
In the House o Parliament when the
delegation of the opposition parties arrived in the PM's office, Pranab
Mukherjee and Gulab Nabi Azad , P. Chidambaram were present there.
The atmosphere was already tense there, which meant the PM and his colleagues
had a hot discussion, it is learnt. But the PM was not able to take his
anger on Mukherjee or Azad and hence he took it out on Advani, Fernandes,
Jaswant Singh etc.
The Prime Minister and the Finance
Minister both wanted discussions on the Budget. Both the Finance
Minister and the Prime Minister felt that they could put before the country
their stand during the discussions. Hence, decision of passing the Budget
without discussions was not acceptable to them. Remarkable thing
was that when taking this decision, Prime Minister was not taken into confidence.
Before taking this decision, Azad had not discussed it with the PM. He
consulted Pranab Mukherjee and Sonia Gandhi and approved passing of the
budget without discussions. Accordingly the Finance Bill was presented
and passed in the LS.
This is a second incident of not
taking the Prime Minister in Confidence. Before this, Dr Manmohan Singh
had no knowledge of the dismissal of governors. He was only informed
that the governor of Haryana was being changed.
When the leader of the opposition
Lal Krishna Advani raised the issue of dismissal of Governors, the Prime
Minister was discussing the issue of dismissing only one Governor.
He had told Advani at that time that he had no idea of dismissal of five
governors.
Prime Minister, who kept a restraint
over the issue of dismissal of governors, got wild about the Budget and
opted out of expressing it on the opposition leader in the presence of
Pranab Mukherjee and Gulab Nabi.
