Ordinance may be dumped

The government may be all set to withdraw the controversial ordinance on convicted lawmakers with the Congress Core Group poring over the matter in the wake of Rahul Gandhi's denunciation of the Cabinet move last week.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who returned home after a week-long visit to the US when Rahul publicly trashed the ordinance, received the Congress Vice-President at his residence this morning before a meeting of the Congress Core Group.
The Core Group, that included party chief Sonia Gandhi and the Prime Minister besides Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde and Ahmed Patel discussed the issue. The meeting is believed to have felt that it would be better for the government to withdraw the ordinance in view of public sentiments against it.

With Rahul making a public issue of it, the option for the government appeared very little, sources said.
Armed with the Core Group opinion, the Prime Minister called on President Pranab Mukherjee, who left on a two-nation tour in the afternoon, to apprise him of the government's thinking on the issue.
The Union Cabinet meeting in the evening is expected to take a call on the issue that may seal the fate of the ordinance that seeks to protect MPs and MLAs from immediate disqualification in case of conviction by a court of law.
The Cabinet cleared the ordinance after a July 10 Supreme Court order struck down a section in the Representation of the People Act which gave a three-month breather to lawmakers to approach a higher court for appeal after conviction and continue to hold the post.