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BJP demands white paper on Article 356

The Bharatiya Janata Party today urged the Union government to issue a white paper on the "use and abuse" of Article 356 of the Constitution since Independence.

BJP general secretary M Venkaiah Naidu said his party wanted a full-scale debate on Article 356 which had been invoked about 110 times in the past, mostly by Congress governments, to dismiss duly elected state governments.

The white paper must have details of the circumstances in which central rule was imposed so that the people can debate the issue in the right perspective, Naidu said.

He said there was already a status paper on President's rule in India, prepared in 1996, and the government would only have to update it and ask the people to deliberate the issue.

Making a strong attack on the Left parties, Naidu said they have been shying away from the debate as they were part of the regimes that misused the provision to get rid of some state governments.

"Bihar was the fittest case where the Left parties could have supported the use of the provision for the first time correctly," he remarked.

UNI

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