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Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on Tuesday made a scathing counterattack on Congress President Sonia Gandhi for alleging that he was working under pressure from Sangh Parivar and declared that he does not work under pressure from anyone.
"I have been accused of working under pressure. This is wrong. I do not work under pressure of anyone. My Parliamentary career is an evidence of this," he said in a spirited intervention during the marathon discussion on the Prevention of Terrorism Bill in the joint sitting of Parliament.
A visibly angry Vajpayee said that he was not prime minister courtesy Congress and despite its opposition 'people want me and I will remain prime minister till they want'.
He also questioned the language used by Gandhi and quoted from her speech to say that she had reminded me that 'the moment of reckoning has come'.
"What does she mean? Why she is reminding me of my primary duties and telling me not to come under pressure of the Parivar," the Prime Minister said.
He added, "Yeh parivar ka mamla hai, Sonia Gandhi isme dakhal na dey (This is a matter regarding Parivar. Sonia Gandhi should not interfere)."
The prime minister said he could list out 'pressures' under which other prime ministers had worked and cited the example of a former prime minister succumbing to external pressure and deferring a planned nuclear test.
"The dates were fixed and shafts dug. But it was at the last moment, the test was cancelled because of foreign pressure," Vajpayee alleged.
To opposition protests, he said, "Be quiet. There is a limit to enduring anything... you don't like to hear the truth."
During Kargil war, he said he was invited by US President Bill Clinton to talk to then Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in Washington.
"But I refused to go and said so long as Pakistan continued to hold an inch of our land, I will not talk." Vajpayee said.
He said, "I am in Parliament since 1957, when Gandhi was 'miles away from politics... I have been facing a test every day. And today I am being put in the witness box. What right have you to do that."
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