By IANS,
New Delhi : Top leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), including president Nitin Gadkari and veteran L.K. Advani, met President Pratibha Patil to complain about what they said was “subversion of parliament” over the Lokpal bill.
“We met the president and complained that there has been a subversion of parliament institution,” Rajya Sabha Leader of the Opposition Arun Jaitley told reporters after meeting Patil at Rashtrapati Bhavan here.
His Lok Sabha colleague Sushma Swaraj, former party president Rajnath Singh as well as M. Venkaiah Naidu, Ananth Kumar, S.S. Ahluwalia and Ravi Shankar Prasad were among those who met the president.
Advani said the BJP leaders raised the issue of the Lokpal bill not being passed in the Rajya Sabha and sought the president’s intervention.
“(We) requested her to intervene. Our complaint and dissatisfaction is on what happened in the Rajya Sabha,” Advani said.
The Lokpal bill could not be passed in the upper house even after a three-day extension of the winter session. The Rajya Sabha was adjourned midnight Dec 29 without scheduled voting.
The BJP has termed this the “murder of democracy”, blaming the Congress for intentionally delaying the process.