Advani asks PM to scrap National Advisory Council

Jabalpur, Apr 26: Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader L K Advani today urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to disband the National Advisory Council (NAC) while describing it as an extra-constitutional body, in a broadside at the Centre on the office of-profit-issue.

Stating that the government must take the people into confidence over the office-of-profit bill, he told mediapersons in this cantonment town that the fact that the NAC was not disbanded generated suspicion that the Centre was intending to reappoint Congress President Sonia Gandhi as the body's chairperson.

''The BJP is of the view that the NAC is an unnecessary and extra-constitutional body created to provide cover to the Congress president to exercise power without accountability. It also weakened and downgraded the high constitutional office of the Prime Minister,'' the former Deputy Prime Minister said on the second day of his 'Bharat Suraksha Yatra' in Madhya Pradesh.

On the Congress contention that the NAC was required for reviewing and monitoring the Common Minimum Programme, he said the task could be entrusted to the PMO itself as it was the Prime Minister's duty to monitor how his government was functioning.

''The proposed legislation on the office-of-profit issue should not dilute the rationale and logic evolved by the Constitution-makers, contained in Articles 102 and 103,'' Mr Advani said.

''With barely a fortnight left for the Parliament session, it was disappointing that the government had not yet taken the people into confidence on what kind of Bill it proposes to introduce on the issue. The Opposition can make its views known only after the government shares its thinking,'' he added while urging the Prime Minister to make his mind known on this crucial issue.

UNI