Pressure mounts on Sonia to 'expose BJP's bluff' on Bofors
Tara Shankar Sahay in New Delhi
With Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee asserting that the Bofors scandal will be pursued to its logical conclusion, senior Congress leaders have urged party chief Sonia Gandhi to confront the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition on the issue.
A senior Congress leader belonging to Madhya Pradesh told Rediff On The NeT, ''Before the election, Sonia had challenged the Opposition to table the Bofors papers in Parliament. But the then Inder Kumar Gujral government had fought shy. This had enabled Sonia and her party colleagues to prove their contention that the non-Congress parties were merely raising the Bofors bogey to extract political mileage out of nothing.''
With the special All India Congress Committee session scheduled to be held at the Siri Fort in New Delhi on Monday next, April 6 -- called to ratify Sonia's election as party chief -- pressure is mounting on Sonia to 'expose' the BJP's bluff on the Bofors issue.
These leaders feel the Vajpayee government is trying to hide its anxiety on the saffron alliance's 'brittle' nature by kicking up the issue again.
Among those who are behind this request are Lok Sabha floor coordination leader Sharad Pawar, his deputy P Shiva Shanker, Madhavrao Scindia, Jitendra Prasada and Arjun Singh.
It is understood that Sonia has told her senior party colleagues that they should not be unduly worried about the Bofors issue. For, as witnessed during the Gujral government, the non-Congress parties's bluff would be 'exposed again'. She, however, added that the party would do everything to scotch canards and rumours against it.
Meanwhile, the party is giving final touches to its political resolution, to be passed at the special AICC session. According to party office-bearers, the resolution will mainly analyse the post-poll scenario and provide guidelines to Congressmen to formulate their strategy.
Elections '98
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