Launching a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi led BJP government at the Centre, former BJP leader and Union Minister Yashwant Sinha on Sunday said that the current BJP government at the Centre has been challenging all the constitutional conventions and destroying all democratic institutions of the country.
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“You all know that we have a written Constitution. There are some constitutional conventions in the country which needs to be respected. But the government is hardly following any constitutional conventions these days,” he said.
Referring to the status of the current Cabinet, Sinha said that in the current dispensation everything is decided from the Prime Ministers’ office. The BJP and PDP formed the government in Jammu and Kashmir. However, Amit Shah visited Kashmir one day and announced that the BJP is pulling out support from the PDP in the state. The Home Minister who was sitting in his office in North Block came to know about this through television channel,” said Sinha.
“When the Prime Minister signed the Naga Framework Agreement with NSCN (IM), the Home Minister came to know about it only when he was rushing to the press conference convened by the PMO the same evening. The Raksha Mantri was not aware when Prime Minister finalized the Rafale deal in Paris,” said Sinha.
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“The Finance Minister came to know about the demonetization only when he was on his way to the Cabinet meeting where the Prime Minister announced demonetization. So policies are being framed from the PMO. You take up any of the Budget speech of the Finance Minister and see for yourself. He falters, he halts, mispronounces … it seems that he was reading something which was written by someone else,” said Sinha.
“While reading the Budget speech in 2017, the finance Minister said spoke about ease of doing business. Then he read ‘now we are going to concentrate on ease of leaving’ instead of ease of living’. Soon after that Vijay Mallya escaped…. this is the condition of finance minister,” he said.
Taking on the external affairs minister, Sinha said that he does not remember one occasion when the Prime Minister has asked the External Affairs Minister to accompany him during his foreign tours.