29 July 2003
MAYAWATI
DIGGING OWN GRAVE BY FIRING AT JAGMOHAN
From Jal
Khambata
NEW DELHI: True to the threat of Uttar Pradesh
Chief Minister Mayawati, her Bahujan Samaj Party MPs on Tuesday
paralysed the Lok Sabha with slogans for dismissal of Union Tourism
Minister Jagmohan for his "misleading" statement on the
controversial Taj Heritage Corridor Project even as Prime Minister
Atal Bihari Vajpayee rejected the demand to drop him from the
Government.
Vajpayee's clear-cut stand at the BJP
Parliamentary Party meeting before the House began that he has
confidence in Jagmohan and "there is no question of his
resignation" was enough signal for the ruling BJP MPs to shout
back at the BSP members storming the well with slogans of "Jagmohan
Ko Barkhast Karo."
While Mayawati has fired the gun at
Jagmohan to please her Muslim vote bank which may drift to the
Samajwadi camp of Mulayam Singh Yadav if she is depicted as anti-Taj
Mahal, the tiff between the BJP and her BSP members may destabilise
her own coalition government that cannot survive without the BJP's
support.
She has only provided an ammunition to the BJP
leaders of Uttar Pradesh who once again made a beeline to the central
party leaders to put pressure to pull out of his
government.
Accusing Jagmohan of "collusion" with
her rivals to destabilise her, Mayawati assured the Prime Minister in
her telephonic call Monday night tocontinue the support of her BSP to
his government at the Centre and stressed that the Jagmohan issue
would not affect the BSP-BJP coalition Government in Uttar Pradesh
claiming that it would run its full term.
BJP LEADERS ANGRY:
The shouts of the angry BJP MPs at the BSP colleagues creating
pandemonium that forced the Speaker to repeatedly adjourn the House,
however, put a question mark on her wish to complete the full term.
The BJP leaders, who are not happy sitting under the shadow of
Mayawati by letting her rule the state, indicate that the party would
better love to have a mid-term poll instead of tolerating such
tantrums and diktats she fires without notice.
They point out
that the Prime Minister had made a personal request to Mayawati to
persuade her BSP members not to raise the issue in Parliament, but
she did not relent putting the government in an awkward situation
that it is attacked by the very party that supports it.
There
should be no surprise if the Prime Minister uneasy with Mayawati's
conduct decides that Uttar Pradesh better go for the assembly polls
in November when the same are taking place in five other states, four
of which fall in the Hindi heartland, namely Madhya Pradesh,
Rajasthan, Delhi and Chhattisgarh.
Uttar Pradesh BJP leader
Kalraj Mishra, who met the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister
L K Advani and Party President M Venkaiah Naidu alongwith other MPs
from the state, indicated that the BJP may even pull the rug from
under Mayawati's feet. The leadership is seriously viewing her
conduct in making public a letter she wrote to the PM about Jagmohan
and then making her party MPs disrupt the Lok Sabha proceedings, he
said, hoping a "positive decision" by the leadership any
moment.
Speaker Manohar Joshi, who braved pandemonium by
members right under his podium to carry on business despite being
howsoever inaudible, "condemned" the BSP members'
behaviour. Pointing out that "you are supporting the government
and so you can take your grievances to the Prime Minister," the
Speaker asked: "Why are you holding the whole House to
ransom?"
Jagmohan, who was answering questions in the
Rajya Sabha at the time of the storm in the Lok Sabha, asserted, in
reply to a question, that neither his ministry not the Environment
Ministry had given a clearance or approval of the Taj Heritage
Corridor Project. The ball is now in the Supreme Court with regard to
the project, he pointed out.
MULAYAM BOYCOTTS ANTI-FERNANDES
WALKOUT: The Opposition led by the Congress walking out, barring the
Samajwadi Party members who stayed back with their leader Mulayam,
and the Shiv Sena members raising the decible of the noise in a bid
to take up the case of the Mumbai bomb blast on Monday to demand the
dismissal of the Congress government made the Speaker direct Defence
Minister George Fernandes to better lay his statement on the table
relating to "incidents of attack by terrorists on the army camp
at Akhnoor (J&K)" last week.
Fernandes was to make
the statement last week but the Speaker had put it off, hoping that
his boycott by the Opposition may end. The Congress was more than
willing as it wanted to put Fernandes on the mat on the defence
matters but other Opposition parties, particularly the Communists,
forced it to continue the boycott in view of the Tehalka
expose.
Despite the walkout, Fernandes would have made the
statement and would have even replied to queries but for the fact
that Shiv Sena, a party in the coalition government and BSP
supporting it from outside had chosen to create pandemonium. Once
Fernandes had laid the statement, the Speaker quickly adjourned the
House.
NOISY SCENES THROUGHOUT: The pandemonium had begun
right from the start when the Speaker told the BSP members that he
has rejected the notice foran adjournment on Jagmohan amd what
followed was the BSP members jumping into the well and raising
slogans that totally submerged the question hour that went on for 20
minutes before the Speaker ordered the first adjournment of 30
minutes.
The pandemonum, however, continued when the House
re-assembled as the BSP members were back in the well with same
slogans and the Speaker continued the question hour despite hardly
any audibility and went through the tabling of the statements before
he adjourned the House up to 2 PM.
BSP leader Rashid Alvi, who
could be seen standing all the time while his party colleagues raised
slogans from the well, wanted the House to discuss the adjournment
motion to debunk Jagmohan giving an impression as if he had stopped
construction of the project that would have jeopardised future of the
Taj Mahal while "the fact was that the UP Chief Minister had
taken steps to stop the work and order an inquiry."
In
between, Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani invited Alvi for a
discussion and later BJP chief whip V K Malhotra went to his seat to
persuade him to allow the normal proceedings but without success.
As
the uproarious scenes continued, the Speaker said he would like to
take up the Question Hour and wante the first question that was
listed against the name of Congress Chief Whip P R Dasmunsi be asked.
Dasmunsi expressed inability to do so saying "there is no order
in the House. I can't even hear what is happening". The Speaker
then moved on to the second question.
Accusing Jagmohan of
"misleading" the House, Alvi said work on the controversial
project had been going on for eight long months, the Tourism Minister
neither stalled it nor take any action against any official despite
the fact that he had a Tourism Office right inside the Taj
complex.
He quoted letters written by Mayawati to the Prime
Minister and Jagmohan's letter to the Chief Minister to show how the
Tourism Minister had not given the "correct picture" to the
House and the nation.
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