A day after President Pranab Mukherjee's 'At Home' function on August 15
generated controversy with BJP leaders claiming LK Advani, Sushma
Swaraj and Arun Jaitley were ignored at the venue, Mukherjee called up
the disgruntled leaders.
"The President telephoned all the three leaders and assured them that their views will be considered
for future functions," President's press secretary Venu Rajamony said.
"The officials at the Rashtrapati Bhawan only followed the past practice."
BJP leaders were in an enclosure along with cabinet ministers,
diplomats and judges besides senior bureaucrats. While the VVIP
enclosure included Vice-President Hamid Ansari, Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh, Lok Sabha speaker Meira Kumar and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi.
"They were initially not even given chairs to sit and were standing in a queue," complained a BJP leader.
A BJP leader said, "Even if we don't consider this a deliberate
insult, it shows utter inefficiency. There isn't just a policy paralysis
in the government; there is a total paralysis of every kind."
This is not the first time that BJP patriarch LK Advani has felt getting rubbed up the wrong way in the recent times.
At the recent swearing in of the Vice-President, Advani was made to
sit in the third row, after which Union ministers Rajeev Shukla and V
Narayanasami ushered him to the front row.
JD(U) leader Shivanand Tiwari said it was he who complained against the protocol violation.
