The ruling BJP has teased Congress chief Sonia Gandhi on her suggestion of she may have the numbers. The BJP has a view that the numbers are not looking anywhere close to even comparing.
On Thursday, ANI quoted Parliamentary Affairs minister Ananth Kumar saying “Sonia ji’s math is weak. They had calculated similarly in 1996. We know what happened then.”
This comment came after a day after the UPA chairperson contested questioned on how the Opposition would rustle up numbers during Friday’s anti-trust motion against the Narendra Modi government which has a comfortable majority in the Lok Sabha.
When NDTV questioned her, she had replied “Who says we don’t have the numbers?”
In 1999 when the charge was on the Congress to produce numbers after Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government fell in the Lok Sabha by one vote, Kumar referred Gandhi’s ill-fated claim during that time.
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After outlining claim with the President outside the Rashtrapati Bhavan she said evidently “We have 272, with more coming in.”
Though for Congress the majority mark never came, Vajpayee went ahead with the caretaker government and the BJP and allies came back to power later that year with a agreeable majority.
Looking at the current strength of the House, it is predictable that NDA needs 268 votes. While its present strength is 314, out of which the speaker is not included but includes ally Shiv Sena. Hence BJP alone has 273.
And the remaining who are non-aligned regional allies like AIADMK (37) and BJD (20) who are expected to stay away from voting.
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