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The Congress president, in her inaugural address at the annual session of the Confederation of Indian Industries in New Delhi on Friday, had said: "When the leader of the opposition is invited by the country's leading industrialists to start off their annual get-together, it is natural to speculate. What could be the motive? What sort of political winds are blowing and in what direction?"
The organisation had deviated from the normal practice of inviting the prime minister and instead called Gandhi to inaugurate the annual session.
At the very outset of his address Vajpayee said: "... I must confess that unlike some others, I am unable to see the deep symbolic meaning attached to the inaugural and concluding sessions of CII conference."
"Politicians are not expected to know the art of doing business. But if there is one thing that we should learn from you, it is this: It does not make business sense to count one's chickens before they are hatched."
"If invitations to inaugurate or conclude conferences could make them speculate about an impending change in the direction of the political winds, then I must say such people seem to think that chambers of commerce and industry have more powers to make and unmake governments than the people of India," Vajpayee said.
The prime minister told the gathering that "our government cannot be derailed. It is stable. It is here to stay. And it is here to stay for its full term. You will continue to do business with us and we will continue to do business with you".
He said when the people of the country elect their Parliament, they expect it to run for five years. Those who have people's mandate to govern are expected to discharge their responsibility well, he said, adding that "those who have been mandated by the people to sit in the opposition are similarly expected to play their due role."
In an obvious attack on the Congress, the prime minister said attempts in recent years to destabilise the governments have neither helped the cause of business nor done any good to the country's democracy.
When the time comes to elect a new Parliament, he said, everyone has a chance to go back to the people. "Whatever the people decide is supreme in a democracy."
Vajpayee said it was not his intention to impart a political tone to his speech. "But the climate of debate in our country in recent months has become so highly vitiated -- by half truths, exaggerations and polemical assertions -- that even the CII platform was not spared."
He also criticised Sonia Gandhi for her remarks on Gujarat and secularism and said: "Let no one use this tragedy to make such sweeping generalisations about the happenings in India."
He declared that the judicial inquiry ordered into the Gujarat violence would be "fair and the guilty shall not go unpunished irrespective of the community or the organisation that they may belong to".
He said those who proclaim that India's secular moorings and foundations are being systematically destroyed do not know how deep and strong the roots of the country's secularism are.
"They only display their ignorance of India's history and of the cultural wellsprings of our nationhood by painting such an alarmist picture. They forget that Indian secularism has withstood even the catastrophe of partition, which was effected on communal lines," he said.
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