Party spokesperson Sushma Swaraj said the BJP was exploring the possiblity of challenging the proclamation in the Supreme Court. The legal option is very much open. She also threatened a mass agitation to mobilise public opinion against the Centre.
She charged that Governor Romesh Bhandari was carrying out his masters mandate because he was the prime benficiary from reimposition of Presidents rule.
After a meeting of its senior office-bearers yesterday, the party sent a letter to President SD Sharma detailing its reasons for opposing the move. The letter requested Sharma to meet party President L K Advani and former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee before taking a final decision in this regard. Sharma had not called them until late evening.
Signed by the two leaders, the letter said that keeping the assembly in animated suspension (sic) under the spurious plea that the Governor had exhausted all avenues to form a government was nothing less than a travesty of the truth and subversion of the democratic process, not to mention violation of all norms and conventions.
Describing it as a fraud perpetrated behind the cover of the Constitution, it said that this would help nobody but the United Front which will gain time to indulge in horse-trading.
The letter expressed the partys apprehension that reimposition of Presidents rule, rather than inviting the single largest party to form the government, would do irreparable damage to our political process and the sanctity of elections. There was no reason Bhandari should ignore the precedents set at the Centre in 1989, 1991 and 1996. When the single largest party was invited. First to form the government, the letter added.