By IANS,
New Delhi : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Tuesday asked the Congress-led government to seek a vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha after the Left’s withdrawal of support over the India-US nuclear deal.
“The government is in minority now. It is now incumbent on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to seek a vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha,” BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters here.
“We demand an emergency session of parliament immediately. It should be before Aug 11, the date announced by the government,” he said after a meeting of BJP leaders at L.K. Advani’s residence in the evening.
Prasad said that it had been the tradition that whenever an ally pulled out of a coalition, the government had been asked to prove its majority in a short span.
“The UPA (United Progressive Alliance) government is taking a month’s time and we think it is not right. It should happen immediately.”
Prasad said after losing the support of 61 Left MPs, the prime minister had lost the political and moral legitimacy to go ahead with the nuclear deal or a major international agreement.
Earlier in the day, BJP president Rajnath Singh called the Left-UPA partnership an “unholy alliance”.
“It was an unholy alliance between the Congress and the Left parties and it had to break,” Singh said.
Prasad said the Congress-led UPA government had messed up the country’s affairs on all fronts.
“Its failure to control skyrocketing prices has caused intense agony to the common man. Its anti-farmer polices have forced large numbers of farmers to commit suicide,” he said.
“The breakdown (of law and order) in Jammu and Kashmir in the last few days exemplifies how it has failed miserably to provide the governance and stability that country needs.”
The Left parties withdrew their support after failing to resolve their dragging differences over the nuclear deal.