10 May 2002

NOOSE TIGHTENING AROUND GUJARAT CM'S NECK AGAIN

From Jal Khambata

NEW DELHI: Gujarat Industries Minister Suresh Mehta was summoned to Delhi and given a dressing-down by Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani in his Parliament House office on Friday for the leakage of his fight with Chief Minister Narendra Modi in a Cabinet meeting on the issue of continuing communal violence.

Also summoned to Delhi by Advani was Ahmedabad Minister Ashok Bhatt who had been also critical of Modi's style of handling the situation as leaked out in the Press, but he excused himself for not coming.

Mehta was quite stubborn despite being pulled up to affirm that Modi had lost confidence of not only the people but also that of most of the ministers for taking decisions keeping them in dark. He refused to comment on his talks with Advani when approached and said only State BJP chief Rajendrasinh Rana will speak on his behalf.

Rana said senior leaders like Advani can always call the party members to give advice. As to any possibility of revival of the plan to remove Modi from the Chief Ministership as reported in a prominent Delhi daily on Friday, Rana said such reports keep appearing past one-and-a-half month and in any case the leadership has full right to take any decision any time.

Suresh Mehta was also seen frankly discussing his viewpoint with the BJP MPs from Gujarat who gathered around him in Parliament's Central Hall. Among others from the Gujarat BJP who were in Delhi on Friday to communicate their concern at the mishandling of the Gujarat situation included Nalini Bhatt, Jayanti Barot, Suryakant and Vijay Patel.

Political circles point out that Suresh Mehta is a soft personality who will not speak out on his own unless prompted by someone important and as such he may be carrying on a campaign against Modi at the instance of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee who is not happy with Modi. Advani has been, however, patronising Modi and he is once again rushing Union Law Minister Arun Jaitley to Ahmedabad on Saturday to prepare Modi for the second round of pressure building within the BJP for his removal.

Sources said Mehta denied his hand in any way in the leakage and all the same he reiterated before Advani his stand that he took in the Cabinet meeting that the mishandling of the situation was giving a bad name to the Bhartiya Janata Party.

Mehta is also believed to have complained to Advani that Modi had been taking many decisions behind the back of the Ministers by not putting them for discussions at the Cabinet meeting and as such many Ministers were totally in dark as to what all he was doing.

Some of the decisions taken in the wake of the violence are critically very sensitive and hence Advani tried to justify Modi not discussing everything in the Cabinet meetings, sources said, adding that he even told Mehta that such decisions would have also been leaked the way the ministers' fight with Modi at this week's Cabinet meeting was leaked out to the Press.

Mehta is believed to have, however, taken a stand that the Chief Minister himself would have prompted someone from his camp to leak out the information to garner support for him from the hardliners in the party. Mehta is understood to have also told Advani as to how ministers and MLAs of Modi's camp were publicly honouring those involved in the communal carnage and wondered if it were getting a good name to the party.

There was also speculation that Modi may be summoned in a day or two, alongwith his detractors, to the capital for a meeting with the senior BJP leaders, but party spokesman Vijay Kumar Malhotra said no decision had been taken so far to hold any such meeting.

Malhotra said the Prime Minister is certainly worried about the violence not coming to an end even after ten weeks, but all the same Vajpayee had frankly admitted in the Rajya Sabha on Monday that a proposal to remove Modi was considered and dropped after an assessment that it will not help in restoring peace. It is not Modi factor that keeps fueling violence and hence where is the question of reassessing the assessment made in Goa, he asked.

He also came down heavily on Punjab Chief Minister Capt. Amrinder Singh for politicising the issue of poviding the Punjab commandos to the Gujarat Government by first accepting to send them and then refusing to do so. In any case, the Centre has no shortage of forces to help out Gujart, he said.

The BJP spokesman said: "An impression should not go that the Congress Chief Ministers have no interest in Gujarat peace or they are being directed from above not to help."

He also put the blame partly on KPS Gill, Security advisor to the Gujarat Chief Minister, for directly talking to the Punjab Government to get the commandos as he should have better approached the Centre to sound the state government.

Moreover, the party sources said the Centre had received intelligence reports that even Muslims were worried at deployment of the Punjab commandos who have a bad track record in terms of the human right violations. How can a civilised government give a licence to these commandos to kill at will and get an immunity from being hauled up under the law, the sources asked. END