NEW DELHI, Nov 23: India’s main opposition parties, buoyed by an emphatic electoral victory in Bihar, said on Wednesday they would target Congress Party president Sonia Gandhi and former foreign minister Kunwar Natwar Singh for alleged corruption in parliament.

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), headed by former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, however appeared to have dropped Prime Minister Manmohan Singh from its range of preferred targets.

The NDA comprises rightwing Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and some regional groups, including the Janata Dal (United) that won power in Bihar in a shock verdict this week. The Pioneer, a BJP newspaper, had reported on Wednesday that the prime minister’s resignation would also be sought, but that seems to have been wrong.

The NDA has decided to move an adjournment motion in the Lok Sabha on Thursday, condemning the alleged receipt of money by Congress from CIA, KGB and from the Iraqi oil deals. The parliament adjourned without any discussion on Wednesday to pay respects to former president K.R. Narayanan, who died earlier this month.

The BJP-led alliance also decided to press for the resignation of Natwar Singh as minister and Ms Sonia Gandhi as chairperson of the national advisory council. It has threatened to block business in both houses if the motion was not accepted.

This was stated by BJP Parliamentary Party spokesman Vijay Kumar Malhotra after a meeting of senior NDA leaders, chaired by Mr Vajpayee.

“We will demand an adjournment motion condemning the sale of the country by the Congress party as substantiated by the Moynihan report, the Mitrokhin archives and the Volcker Committee report,” Mr Malhotra said.

A former US ambassador to India, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, had alleged that former prime minister Indira Gandhi was given money by the CIA to fight the communists in the early 1970s.

The recently released Mitrokhin archives points to a KGB liaison with the Congress and Indian communist parties. The UN-led Volcker-committee has accused the Congress and Mr Natwar Singh of bribing Iraq’s Saddam Hussein to profit from the oil-for-food plan.

Indicating that the alliance would not allow smooth functioning of both houses, Mr Malhotra said: “We are demanding only an open debate and we will press for it till the government accepts our demand.”