Advani in Delhi on Sunday. Picture by Ramakant Kushwaha

New Delhi, July 20: Whoever wins the trust vote, the ruling alliance appears to have a clear edge in the debate that precedes it.

The BJP lacks powerful speakers in the Lok Sabha, most of its articulate members being in the upper House. Even its NDA partners lag in the eloquence quotient.

Although L.K. Advani is capable of making an impact, he will sorely miss the backup that Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley could have provided had they been in the Lok Sabha.

With veterans Atal Bihari Vajpayee and George Fernandes in poor health, the government is likely to have an easy time during the two-day debate on the confidence motion.

The BJP’s main speakers will be Advani, Vijay Kumar Malhotra, Ananth Kumar and Shahnawaz Hussein. Its allies will be fielding Prabhunath Singh of the Janata Dal (United), Braj Kishore Tripathi of the Biju Janata Dal, Sukhdeo Singh Dhindsa of the Akali Dal and Ananth Geethe of the Shiv Sena.

The line-up is hardly impressive when considered against the Congress team of Manmohan Singh, Pranab Mukherjee, Priya Ranjan Das Munshi and Kapil Sibal.

Leaders recall how invigorating confidence debates used to be till recently. The likes of Vajpayee, Fernandes, Sharad Yadav, Chandra Shekhar, Indrajit Gupta, Somnath Chatterjee and Madhavrao Scindia would set the floor on fire, making the event as memorable for its oratorical fencing as for the numerical outcome.

Some of the younger MPs are capable of adding to the cut and thrust, but they all belong to the UPA. Jyotiraditya Scindia is an excellent speaker and Rahul Gandhi, Sachin Pilot, Priya Dutt and several others are magnets for the media.

The BJP, however, lacks young talent and has failed to pin the government down on any issue in the Lok Sabha during the past four years. After Advani’s forceful start, his party instantly loses the plot.

For day-to-day debates, the BJP banks on the likes of Kharabela Swain, Harin Pathak, Rasa Singh Rawat and Sumitra Mahajan, who usually serve up routine arguments.

The party’s nuclear deal experts, Arun Shourie and Yashwant Sinha, who could have countered the government on technical points too are in the Rajya Sabha. So are many senior leaders who can speak well, such as M.M. Joshi, Jaswant Singh and Rajnath Singh.

The Samajwadi Party’s switch to the government side has further weakened the Opposition. In the absence of Mulayam Singh Yadav himself, Ramjilal Suman and Mohan Singh have held fort in the House admirably.

So, the anti-deal brigade will be pinning its hopes on the Left, which too has a mediocre set of speakers to offer. Gurudas Dasgupta is all rhetoric while Basudeb Acharya and Rupchand Pal are on the drier side.