BJP demands Prime Minister's resignation

NEW DELHI: BJP today demanded Prime Minister Manmohan Singh resign immediately on his return from abroad in the wake of Rahul Gandhi's denunciation of the ordinance on convicted lawmakers.

BJP also accused Gandhi of "crossing limits of civility" in attacking the ordinance and said his "intervention is designed to create discomfort to the President".

"If the Prime Minister accepts my request to hear the voice of his conscience, the moment he lands in Delhi he should head to the Rashtrapati Bhawan to tender his resignation," BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad said.

The BJP leader said he had rightly demanded the resignation of the Prime Minister many times but today he appealed to Singh to listen to his conscience and quit.

"Dr Manmohan Singh, come on. Do you have any conscience left? Because the issue is not of Dr Manmohan Singh, the issue is that of the integrity of the office of Prime Minister of the country," Prasad said.

He said Manmohan Singh had been criticised many times "but never before has he been insulted like this."

Citing the then Prime Minister Rajiv's public rebuke of Foreign Secretary A P Venkateswaran, he said "if the conscience of a self-respecting Foreign Secretary can awaken, let's see if the Prime Minister's conscience awakens."

Prasad also reminded Singh of Rajiv Gandhi saying adverse things about the Planning Commission when he was Deputy Chairman of the Commission.

BJP's Deputy leader in Rajya Sabha said that under the Constitution, the President acts on the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers and questioned the kind of advice given by the Ministers to him.

"This whole intervention in some way is designed to create a position of discomfort even to the President of India," the BJP leader alleged.