The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) launched a counter-offensive against the Opposition by revealing names of stalwarts who had made recommendations for petrol pump allotments to Union petroleum minister Ram Naik. The list includes leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha and former finance minister Manmohan Singh, Congress vice-presidential candidate Sushil Kumar Shinde, Jyotiraditya Scindia and CPM leader Basudeb Acharya.
In a carefully crafted strategy by BJP's crisis managers, the party has decided to target senior Opposition leaders, and blame the Opposition for stalling Parliament and ignoring serious issues like the drought.
The Congress, however, remained unfazed by this offensive and reiterated its demands for the resignation of Naik, and an inquiry by a sitting Supreme Court judge, assisted by the Central Bureau of Investigation.
A group of BJP leaders and ministers met Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani in the morning to discuss the issue.
Mahajan is reported to have informed the leadership that the government's business would not suffer much even if Parliament was stalled for the rest of the session.
The counter-offensive planned by BJP strategists include exposing Congress leaders and their family members who got petrol pump outlets since 1983, when the then petroleum minister B Shankaranand was alleged to have doled out "favours" to Congress leaders.
"They have distributed over 18,000 petrol pumps in lieu of favours," BJP spokesman Vijay Kumar Malhotra said. Malhotra criticised the Opposition for disrupting Parliament despite the decision by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to cancel all allotments.
