Manmohan Singh with LK Advani outside Parliament on Wednesday. (AFP)

New Delhi, March 24: L.K. Advani today said he was by now “used to” the Prime Minister’s barbs and cited Manmohan Singh’s comments in the Lok Sabha yesterday as one of the high points of the WikiLeaks debate.

During a chat with journalists at a lunch hosted by BJP leader M. Venkaiah Naidu, Advani, who was accompanied by his daughter Pratibha, was asked what he thought were the best parts of the proceedings.

“Sushma Swaraj’s speech and the PM’s,” he said.

Singh had said yesterday that Advani believed he had a “birthright” to become Prime Minister, and had advised the BJP leader to “wait in the wings” for another three-and-a-half years.

Asked if he was hurt by Singh’s remarks, Advani said: “No, I was not. By now I’m used to them.”

He, however, recalled having an amiable conversation with Singh yesterday morning at the centenary celebrations for socialist icon Ram Manohar Lohia.

“He asked me if I knew Dr Lohia. I said that I had met him as a journalist (Advani had worked as a film critic for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh weekly Organiser) because I entered mainstream politics only in 1970. I told him that Lohiaji and I had discussed the idea of an Indo-Pak confederation,” Advani said.

“The PM asked ‘Is that possible now?’ I said it was not, because Pakistan has since unleashed terrorism on India; it’s in a state of chaos. There’s no central authority in Pakistan; nobody can figure out who’s in command. Hours after this chat, he said those things about me.”

Sushma, whom Singh had jokingly subjected to an Urdu couplet in Parliament yesterday, described the Prime Minister’s move as “charming” but “inappropriate”.

When a reporter said he had spent his youth reciting those very lines to unresponsive women, Sushma laughed and said: “That is why I said it was misplaced in yesterday’s context. I felt it was not combative. It had humour, the way it was said. It cooled tempers; even I smiled when he said it.”