How the House crisis was resolved

He may be leader of the Opposition, but LK Advani had Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at a disadvantage when earlier this week, the Prime Minister invited him to resolve the crisis arising out of the National Democratic Alliance's (NDA) threat.

Singh was clearly not prepared for the depth of feeling and emotion that Advani gave vent to, as he described why the Opposition had taken the extreme step of boycotting the standing committees of Parliament.

When Singh, flanked by Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Home Minister Shivraj Patil, said he was anxious to end the government-Opposition impasse, Advani began recounting all the statements and issues that had wounded the Opposition into its extreme reaction.

Highly placed sources said what particularly irked Advani was the statement made by the Prime Minister during his first foreign visit to Thailand where he drew a parallel between "tainted" Jharkhand Mukti Morcha leader Shibu Soren and Advani.

Advani pointed out to Singh that though he and his senior colleague AB Vajpayee had gone abroad several times as the Opposition leaders, not once did they utter the word 'Bofors' or attempt to run down the Congress when out of the country. Advani's reaction caught Singh and his colleagues off guard.

Advani also referred to Singh's statement, which implied that Advani was instrumental not only in pulling down the Babri mosque but also in inciting the mobs to violence. "This is the kind of allegation, which was never levelled even within the country," he said.

Though Mukherjee and Patil tried to pacify the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader by saying they held him in high esteem, Advani is learnt to have told them bluntly that he was aware of the fact that none of these three leaders had the reins of governance in their hands.

He also raised the issue of a statement made by Union Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh who declared that he had decided not to invite the BJP to an official function. "What do I infer from these statements?" the former deputy prime minister asked.

Reverting to the issue of the governors' removal, Advani took objection to Patil's assertion that the governors' ideology had to be compatible with the government.

"When I agreed to Somnath Chatterjee's name as Speaker, did I agree to his ideological position?" he countered. "For me, it was enough that Chatterjee swears by the Constitution" he said.

Having given vent to his feelings, Advani agreed that it was not a happy situation that the proceedings in Parliament kept getting disrupted.

The formula that clinched the discussion spelled out that while Mukherjee would withdraw his statement, VK Malhotra (BJP) would withdraw his statement.

But Mukherjee and Patil also gave an assurance that the situation would certainly be different when the session begins from August 16.