Former Youth Congress leader Bhanupratapnarain seeks PM's exit

New Delhi, Sep 4 (UNI) Former Youth Congress leader Bhanupratapnarain Mishra today urged Congress President Sonia Gandhi to remove Prime Minister Manmohan Singh from the post for misleading the country on the Indo-US nuclear deal and his utter failure to arrest price rise and inflation.

In a statement, Mr Mishra suggested to Congress President Sonia Gandhi to appoint some senior leader of the party as prime minister in place of Dr Manmohan Singh and suggested the names of Mr Pranab Mukherjee, Mr Digvijay Singh, Mr Shivraj Patil and Narayan Dutt Tiwari. He said it was always better for the country to have a prime minister who had political background instead of an economist. This was proved by former prime ministers-- Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru, Ms Indira Gandhi, Mr Rajiv Gandhi and Mr Narasimha Rao.

Mr Mishra said this would definitely help the party in the coming Lok Sabha and assembly elections.

He referred to the 26-page letter of the Bush Administration published in the Washington Post in which the US state department had said the deal would be null and void if India carried a nuclear test and nuclear fuel supply to India by NSG countries would be stopped. This revelation, he said, had badly hit the image of the Congress-led UPA government which was now being branded as anti-national. Besides, the people had been accusing the Congress of being slave to the US.

"I, being a disciplined worker of the party will like to point out that the grass-root worker of the party is today demoralised and it is necessary that some corrective steps are taken immediately," Mr Mishra said.

The former national secretary of the youth Congress clarified to the Congress President that he was trying to express his concern over the Nuke issue through the media, as he was never accorded any audience by her in the past one and a half year despite his best efforts.

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