Manmohan weak, has no authority: Advani

THE POINT IS: BJP leader L K Advani takes on the Prime Minister over governance in UPA.

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New Delhi: The acrimony between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader L K Advani is getting bitter.

Singh on Friday said he won’t give Advani the “privilege” of being an “alternative Prime Minister”. It was Advani’s turn to hit back on Saturday.

Advani, the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate, said Singh was “weak” and had “no authority”. He hinted that Congress chief Sonia Gandhi held real power in the United Progressive Alliance government.

“You have a situation in which the Prime Minister who holds office but has no authority and the person who has authority has no accountability. This is not a democracy,” Advani toll CNN-IBN in a short interview.

“I have known cases where the Prime Minister has proposed some course of action but he is not able to implement it unless he gets clearance from the Congress party president.” Advani alleged the Prime Minister’s weakness was “patently” visible and “very clear”.

“I describe him as a weak Prime Minister in the context of the fact that I had said that I have seen Prime Ministers earlier who had the support of only four MPs in the house and yet they were never at a disadvantage. I have seen Chandrashekar; I have seen H D Deve Gowda,” said Advani.

In his sharpest attack ever on the BJP leader, Singh on Friday said he did not wish to have a television debate with Advani. "The BJP has not allowed Parliament to function. The BJP shied away from all these discussions and now Advani wants to come and debate with me. And I don't want to give him the privilege that he is an alternative prime minister," he said.

BJP leader Arun Jaitley on Saturday called the Prime Minister’s statement “hit-and-run" tactics.