Stalling Problems For 4-Stroke Scooters

The BJP yesterday asserted that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) should be treated as one group for the purpose of government formation at the Centre.

The party refused to categorically state whether the BJP on its own would become the single largest party in the thirteenth Lok Sabha.

Joining issue with the Congress on who the President should call to invite to form the next government party spokesperson Arun Jaitley argued that the Congress'claim that there was no such entity as the NDA was "a spurious constitutional debate." The Congress was refusing to admit the political reality, he said.

The BJP's contention is based on the logic that the NDA is a grouping of pre-poll alliance partners who have agreed to implement a common minimum. programme. The leaders had addressed joint rallies, he added.

He claimed that the Trinamul Congress' Mamata Banerjee and Telugu Desam's N Chandrababau Naidu had already declared their affiliation with the NDA although they were not physically present at the release of the NDA's common agenda.

The BJP fielded Jaitley to repudiate the Congress'claim that it would emerge as the single largest party and that President KR Narayanan should therefore invite it to form the government. The Congress'claim had at least established that the party had conceded it would not get a majority, Jaitley said.

Union Law Minister Ram Jethmalani has already lambasted Congress spokesperson Kapil Sibal for malting such a claim and described this as "constitutional nonsense."

Jaidey rebutted the Congress'claim and held that the party would be "150 seats short of the half-way mark." He argued that the situation was different than 1996, when Narayanan invited AB Vajpayee to form the government by virtue of being largest party. lor:Black; text-decoration:none} a:hover {color: '#CC0000'; text-decoration:none} -->