M A I N   N E W S

PM’s speech fails to impress Opposition
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 15
With an eye on the forthcoming elections, the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, today addressed the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort, said the Opposition parties cutting across partylines.

“It was an absolutely pedestrian, prosaic kind of speech. It struck all the right notes on the Indo-Pak relations and on those issues the Congress party has no differences with the Government”, Congress spokesman S Jaipal Reddy said.

In fact, he said, on foreign policy issues, the Congress had made it a point to go out of the way and express solidarity with the Government.

Stating that huge differences existed with the Government on domestic issues, Reddy said the Congress did not want to extend it to the foreign policy area.

The secretary of Communist Party of India, Mr Atul Kumar Ranjan, told The Tribune the significant aspect of the speech was the move to set upon National Commission for Farmers.

This is the shortest speech by any Prime Minister, as Mr Vajpayee seemed to have realised that tall claims have been futile as his government had failed to live up to the promises, be it one crore jobs or other issues, he added.

Mr Nilopal Basu, leader of the CPM in the Rajya Sabha, said the Prime Minister’s remark for the need to create 33 per cent double member seats for enacting Women’s Reservation Bill, “is absolutely unacceptable.”

The CPM leader said the Women’s Reservation Bill in its present form should be tabled in the House. The Bill calls for reservation of 33 per cent seats in Parliament and state legislature and not of creation of double member constituencies.

All parties described that the focus of the speech was on highlighting his own success in running the coalition government successfully despite odds and was more of rhetoric than of substance. It appeared to be more of a speech by a leader of a political party than that of a leader of nation addressing the nation on its Independence Day, they added.