PM's powers usurped by extra-constitutional arrangement: BJP
New Delhi, Jul 7 (UNI) The BJP has come down heavily on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh saying he was merely the head of the UPA government and his political powers were usurped and exercised by an extra-constitutional arrangement.
The BJP, which came out with its assessment of four years of UPA rule in a separate chapter, said the Prime Minister was the Leader of the House in Rajya Sabha and the Leader of the House in Lok Sabha was Pranab Mukherjee.
Under the Westminster system, Leader of the lower house of Parliament is the Prime Minister who presides over meetings of the Parliamentary Party in the two Houses of Parliament.
The Prime Minister is also not the leader of the Alliance. The initial assessment was done on the same day and the formal release of the 118 page-document was made by BJP spokesman Rajiv Pratap Rudy today.
The country had seen coalition governments in the past, including the previous NDA regime headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who was leader of the Lok Sabha as well as Chairman of the NDA.
Dr Singh may be the Prime Minister, yet he fails to exercise full control over the political and administrative arena in the country, the booklet observed.
Attacking the government from the aspect of collective responsibility, the BJP said that the members of the Cabinet had effectively destroyed the sysyte during the last three years. The Cabinet ministers had freely abused and contradicted each other in public and recalled how the Rashtriya Janata Dal of Railways Minister Lalu Prasad had abstained from Lok Sabha to protest against the imposition of President's Rule.
''He should have been dismissed after his abstention'', the party observed.
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