Advani slams Manmohan Singh, calls him the weakest PM ever

Banka/Katihar: Senior BJP leader LK Advani today returned Congress’ barb of Atal Behari Vajpayee being the weakest Prime Minister by dubbing Manmohan Singh as such and saying that the party will be swept out of power at the Centre and from some states.

“I have never seen such a weak prime minister… he has been the weakest prime minister ever,” he told an election meeting here echoing PM’s former media adviser Sanjay Baru’s book ‘The Accidental Prime Minister’.

Advani alleged that Singh hid his failure to rein in corruption and scams behind compulsions of coalition politics, but he was too weak a Prime Minister to prevent corruption among ministers in his government.

“The Prime Minister should not have allowed corruption and scams to take place in the first place and exercised his authority to crack the whip against errant ministers,” he said.

But it was not to be as he allowed himself to be manipulated by Congress leadership given his weakness as a person, which had denigrated the institution of prime minister and brought in chaos all around, Advani alleged.

Criticising the Congress-led UPA government for price rise, corruption and scams, Advani held that it would be go out of power at the Centre and in several states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar as in 1977 when the Janata Party had formed a government after the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed Emergency in 1975.

Advani also sought to draw a comparison between the UPA and the NDA government led by Vajpayee.

He said that Vajpayee had brought glory to the country by his handling of foreign affairs and keeping price rise under check.

Advani, who was deputy prime minister in the BJP-led NDA government, said that the Vajpayee government had conceived major policy decisions like the inter-linking of rivers to provide irrigation to farmers.

The then NDA government also undertook road infrastructure projects to improve connectivity for development and not vice versa, he said, and slammed the Pradhan Mantri Grameen Sadak Yojana launched by UPA government, which he claimed, had failed to give desired results due to mismanagement in execution.

“I can see very clearly that the NDA will form the government at the Centre by riding on the momentum in its favour and strong undercurrent against the UPA,” Advani said.

“The western countries had the dominated 20th century, but the the 21st century belongs to India for which a strong government and leadership was required to bring in development and infrastructure,” he added.

PTI