PM Manmohan Singh ko gussa kyon aaya?

NEW DELHI: Why did Prime Minister Manmohan Singh lose his shirt? Or did he? It all depends on who''s telling the story.
“Two-and-a-half minutes� and a terse encounter at the Prime Minister''s chamber on Wednesday ensured that the Finance Bill was passed in the Lok Sabha with rows of empty seats where the Opposition should have been seated.
A slighted NDA decided to boycott even this last bit of Parliamentary requirement before the Budget session came to an end.Because, insist NDA leaders, Manmohan Singh "threw down" and refused to accept the memorandum on the Budget handed over by senior leaders like L K Advani and George Fernandes.
Even former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has expressed unhappiness on Singh''s "behaviour". Tainted ministers and such like will be put aside for the time being as the NDA wallows and protests.
But Congressmen are stoutly standing by the soft-spoken Prime Minister, insisting that all he did was refuse to entertain any demand on the Budget made outside Parliament, upset as he is over the stalling of proceedings for days on end.
"Let’s face it. Why should he entertain a last-minute memorandum outside Parliament, when the Opposition refused to debate something as important as the nation’s budget in House? He has every right to reject it," a Congress leader said. "If you have a point to make, make it in Parliament. That is the forum for it."
Senior Congress leaders are dismissive of the NDA’s crib. Finance Minister P Chidambaram pointed out that in any case it would have been impossible to entertain the many suggestions made only hours before the Finance Bill was to be passed.
Party leaders say Manmohan was as polite as ever in his dealing with the NDA delegation. And that the NDA team just blew up the whole thing, including the claim that the meeting lasted two and a half minutes. “It was well over that, about 10 minutes�, said a leader.
"He did not throw down the papers, he merely refused to receive them," said Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, who was present during the brief encounter.
Congressmen say the mild-mannered Manmohan can be irritated, but he is hardly the sort to be impolite to people. That it is just not like him to be so, even when pushed.
But NDA leaders insist they are not imagining things: "There is no scope for conflicting reports on this. He behaved badly and it is unprecedented. There have been political battles in Parliament before but when the then Opposition leaders met Atalji as PM, he was always so warm. I am sure even Mani Shankar Aiyer (the favourite whipping boy of the BJP nowadays) would not have acted this way," a BJP leader and former Union minister said.
The NDA has also pounced upon another incident to bolster their argument against the PM.
They are now recounting how some Orissa leaders had sought a special package, like the one for Bihar, for their state. "The PM told them money did not grow on trees," BJP spokesman V K Malhotra said.
True to type, Manmohan had followed up the Wednesday meeting with phone calls to Advani and Jaswant Singh in the evening to clarify that he meant no disrespect. But a smarting NDA will not relent.