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