Manmohan Singh had lost his cabinet’s trust: Amit Shah

NEW DELHI: A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi slammed Congress president Sonia Gandhi dubbing her an “unconstitutional authority” who had controlled the then PM Manmohan Singh, his party chief Amit Shah went a step further alleging that Manmohan’s own Cabinet didn’t trust him.

According to a BJP press release issued in new Delhi, Shah while talking to reporters in Goa said, “the Cabinet had lost trust in the PM while the bureaucracy had lost faith in the government.” Shah said unlike the UPA years when the PM had no say and every minister was a PM, the NDA government has restored the pre-eminence and glory of the Prime Minister’s Office and now the country is looking up to the PM with a lot of hope.

BJP and Congress have been engaged in a bitter war of words for the last few days. Shah’s statements in Panaji are part of a series of attacks and counter-attacks between Congress president Sonia Gandhi, her deputy Rahul Gandhi and Manmohan Singh on the one side and Modi and Shah on the other. On Wednesday, Manmohan Singh had taken on BJP for talking about UPA’s corruption to divert attention from NDA’s lack of performance and demolition of the welfare state. Shah soon responded terming the former PM a “puppet” who was “lying with a straight face.”

No blanket beef ban: Amit Shah

NEW DELHI: BJP president Amit Shah had to step in himself to resolve the contradictions within the NDA government over the question of banning beef across the country. “Wherever there is a BJP government, we will consider sentiments of the people before imposing ban on beef. We haven’t said that we will be banning beef across the country,” Shah told a news conference in Panjim, on Thursday - ET Bureau