Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting and Parliamentary Affairs Priyaranjan Dasmunsi denied that the nation was heading for a mid-term poll.

"We are going to have a budget session and if the budget is not passed how will people get their salaries. Let us assure you that this government will complete its full term," he told newsmen in New Delhi on Thursday while briefing them on the decisions taken by the Union government early on Thursday morning.

He lashed out at the Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial nominee Lal Kishenchand Advani and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi [Images] for bringing up the hanging of Afzal Guru.

"Where was he when he put the petitions against Rajiv Gandhi's assassins in a deep freezer and never even mentioned them while he was in power?" he asked.

Dasmunsi said that those who were raising the issue of Afzal Guru are reminding the nation that the attack on Parliament took place when the BJP was at the helm of affairs.

"There would have been no need to remember this day every year, but thanks to the BJP we do," he said.

Talking about the non-allotment of a petrol pump to one of the widows of 2001 attack on Parliament, the minister said that it would not be proper for the victim's wife to insist on a particular location.

"The pump will be allotted where there is a place," he said.

Former information and broadcasting minister Ravi Shankar Prasad joined issues with Dasmunsi and said that he would not comment on the judgment of the Union minister because the cases of Afzal Guru and the Rajiv Gandhi assassins was totally different.

"The attack on Parliament cannot be equated with the murder of an ordinary person," he said without naming the former prime minister.

According to Prasad the appeal of the former prime minister's killers is still pending before the court of law while Afzal Guru's appeal has been dismissed.

Prasad ridiculed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh [Images] for trying to compare the stature of Modi with Lal Kishenchand Advani by saying that Advani had hastened the process of seeking approval of his name for the prime ministership as he thought that Modi could emerge as his potential rival for the top slot.

Prasad refused to admit that the party had failed miserably in releasing late the appeal of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to voters in Gujarat while his appeal was issued in Himachal Pradesh much earlier.

Though the party said that it was replying to the charge made by the Congress party, Prasad failed to mention that it was a newspaper printed from Delhi and other centres which had carried the story in its Hindi edition a couple of days back after its reporter stumbled on Vajpayee's appeal to Himachal Pradesh voters.