Prime Minister Manmohan Singh?s attempt to show his concern for Mumbai and signal national unity on the issue of terror by visiting the beleaguered city with opposition leader LK Advani proved a non-starter on Thursday evening after the two leaders eventually travelled separately to the Maharashtra capital.
According to top political circles, Singh overruled chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh?s appeal not to visit the wounded city until operations against the terrorists were concluded, and decided to go to Mumbai on Thursday itself after indications from Advani that they could travel together and present a picture of bipartisan solidarity.
The Prime Minister had initially heeded suggestions from Maharashtra as well as his own intelligence advisors on avoiding travel to Maharashtra while security and law enforcement agencies were preoccupied with the anti-terrorism operations. The Maharashtra chief minister, sources said, told the Prime Minister that his visit to Mumbai would put an avoidable strain on the entire security apparatus.
Sources said the Prime Minister, however, changed his plans after receiving a positive response from the opposition BJP camp that they were keen to present a united front on terror. Advani also told a press conference on Thursday morning that he had had telephonic conversations twice with the Prime Minister during the course of which he expressed the desire to visit Mumbai that very evening. At the same press conference, Advani also made it clear that the BJP was in full support of the government at this critical juncture.
The rare show of unanimity was also on display later in the day when the BJP and the Congress put aside their bitter war of words and condemned the terror attacks. ?This is an hour for all sections of society to sink their differences so that the nation can stand up as one body. We expect that the issue of terrorism is kept above politics,? the BJP said in a statement after a high-level meeting chaired by Advani at the party headquarters.
In the evening, however, the BJP prime ministerial candidate flew to Mumbai in a separate aircraft, in the company of senior colleague Jaswant Singh.
The Prime Minister later winged his way to the city along with Union home minister Shivraj Patil and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar. Political analysts in the evening also predicted that the BJP would not be able to resist from attacking the UPA on its failure to tackle terrorism in the coming days.