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BJP wants a statute against foreign-born PM

Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow

The Bharatiya Janata Party is contemplating the need to amend the Constitution to debar persons of foreign origin from holding the office of prime minister, former information and broadcasting minister Sushma Swaraj said in Lucknow today.

Swaraj was in the Uttar Pradesh capital on a day's visit to attend a function to mark the first anniversary of the Pokharan nuclear tests.

Addressing a press conference, she said, "The matter is under the consideration of the updates committee of the party that is giving final shape to the ruling coalition's national agenda that is proposed to be adopted as the BJP's election manifesto."

The suggestion to formulate such a law was made by former prime minister Chandra Shekhar, she added.

"As a daughter-in-law of a late Indian prime minister and wife of another, Sonia Gandhi deserves utmost respect, love and affection and the best security," Swaraj said, "but she cannot be accepted as prime minister of this country."

Lamenting that the Congress president had still not given up her Italian citizenship, "since they allow dual citizenship in her country", she felt happy that the suggestion to prevent foreigners from occupying the chair of the country's head of government had come from Defence Minister George Fernandes.

"I am aware that even opinion in the Congress party is divided on this question," she said.

Asked if the party's decision to adopt the national agenda of the ruling coalition as its election manifesto was acceptable to the BJP's ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, she said, "The RSS leaders are fully in agreement with our decision, as they too realise that this election is being held only to accomplish an incomplete task of fulfilling our commitment to the people who voted us to power."

She flatly denied that the decision had emerged out of BJP's loss of confidence to rule the nation on its own. "Since we have successfully pursued a national agenda together with our allies, we choose to carry the same agenda before the people," she observed, adding, "This also shows that gone are the days when the BJP remained in isolation and was shunned by all other parties."

She also ruled out the question of even a tacit understanding with the Samajwadi Party, as charged by the Congress. 'After what SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav did in Ayodhya as the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh in 1990, this is unthinkable," she said. "Can we or our party rank and file forget the carnage on account of the police firing on karsevaks ordered by him?"

Referring to the dissidence in the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, where matters appear to be coming to a head, she claimed that things had "settled down". "Differences of opinion do emerge in all democratic parties, but such matters get sorted out," she said.

When her attention was drawn to the meteoric rise of small-time party worker Kusum Rai as a key centre of power under Chief Minister Kalyan Singh's patronage, which is the root cause of the dissidence, she said, "Well, I would suggest that in the circumstances everyone should exercise restraint."

Rai's appointment as chairperson of the Uttar Pradesh State Social Welfare Board with the rank of minister of state is what seems to have sparked the latest round of recriminations.

Making an oblique reference to the much-discussed proximity between Singh and Rai, Swaraj recalled a well-known episode from the Ramayan and said, "Lord Ram chose to abandon Sita simply because of an accusation made by a washerman. Now I don't wish to make any further comment on this issue; I have said enough and I am sure you understand what I mean."

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