Advani dares PM to hold LS, Assembly polls simultaneously

Senior BJP leader L K Advani on Tuesday challenged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to simultaneously hold elections to Lok Sabha and assemblies of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Delhi.

"Everybody knows that Congress governments are not run properly, unlike BJP and NDA governments in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Punjab, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Karnataka. If there were any shortcomings in Karnataka, they are gone," Advani, here to campaign for the May 5 Assembly polls, told a public meeting here.

Referring to the Prime Minister's presence here earlier in the day for the campaign, Advani said if he had met him, "I would have asked the PM not to delay and to hold Lok Sabha elections along with assembly elections coming up in MP, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Delhi. This will be good."

The veteran BJP leader said he has never seen a weaker Prime Minister than Manmohan Singh as he does not take decisions on his own. "Manmohan Singh asks 10 Janpath before taking any decision," he said, apparently referring to Congress President Sonia Gandhi.

However, there had been Prime Ministers like Deve Gowda, Chandrashekhar and I K Gujral who had exercised their powers given under the Constitution on their own, Advani said.

"One cannot compare with any other country the kind of powers the Prime Minister enjoys under the Indian Constitution. These three Prime Ministers exercised their powers without thinking hard. This situation does not prevail now. Therefore I say I have never seen a weaker Prime Minister than Manmohan Singh. I agree he is good, but he is weak."

A country cannot progress under the leadership of a weak Prime Minister, he said. A Advani also launched an attack on former Congress Prime Ministers. "Can anybody forget the ignominious defeat we faced at the hands of China in 1962? Our soldiers fought the war without proper shoes and uniform," he said.

"Can anybody forget Indira Gandhi? During her rule, she imposed Emergency and jailed many prominent leaders like Deve Gowda, Jayprakash Narayan, Ramakrishna Hegde and others," he said.

Advani said he was lucky to have worked with two Prime Ministers -- Morarji Desai and Atal Behari Vajpayee -- who were honest.