Deputy Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj on Saturday admitted that the BJP was passing through a bad phase but added that the “party would come out of it soon”. “As in an individual’s life, there are good and bad phases in the life of a political party, but we will come out of it soon,” Swaraj said in response to a question at the HT Leadership Summit.

In response to a question on whether a one-party (Congress) dominance appeared imminent, especially after the BJP had been hit by one crisis after another, Swaraj replied in the negative and said the “BJP was ruling in as many as six states and the Congress was in Opposition in 10 states”. “Our Lok Sabha tally in 2009 is 116, two more than the Congress tally of 114 in 1999. They didn’t have a bleak future, how can we then have a bleak future now,” she said.

She, however, skirted a question on whether she would succeed L K Advani as Leader of Opposition soon. “These are mere speculation and guesswork, so there is no need to answer this question,” she said. The senior BJP leader was taking part in a discussion on the role and relevance of Opposition in a democracy, along with CPM’s Sitaram Yechury and Shiromani Akali Dal’s Sukhbir Singh Badal.

Yechury said it was the CPM pressure that prevented the last UPA government from introducing four key legislations on financial liberalisation which helped minimise the effects of global recession in the country. Swaraj, on the other hand, said the BJP, as the main opposition party, had traditionally discharged its role as a watchdog “well”.

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