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Saturday, May 08, 2004

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National

BJP rakes up Congress allegations against DMK

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, MAY 7. The Bharatiya Janata Party today once again raked up the allegations made by the Congress in 1998 against the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and its leaders that they involved in activities of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

While the BJP and its leaders are refusing to say categorically that the DMK will not be welcome back to the National Democratic Alliance, today's exercise is being seen in political circles as an attempt to create divisions within the DMK-Congress alliance. In the final round of polling on May 10 what happens in the 39 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu and one in Pondicherry is critical — it could help the NDA make it to the half-way mark or put it way behind.

The BJP spokesperson, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, released to the press here the letter written on August 19, 1998 to the Home Minister, L.K. Advani, by the Congress leaders, Arjun Singh, Pranab Mukherjee, Manmohan Singh, Mani Shankar Aiyar, and others, asking Mr. Advani to get the role of the DMK leader, M. Karunanidhi, investigated in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. Apparently, Mr. Arjun Singh followed this up with another letter on August 25, hoping that Mr. Advani was not reneging on his commitment to the Congress to get the DMK's role investigated.

Mr. Naqvi made the point that the letter was written on August 19, 1998, "after'' the final report of the Jain Commission was submitted to the Government. The Congress stated earlier that its 1998 charges against the DMK were based on the interim report of the Commission; and that these were dropped by it after the final report was submitted, had been shown to be a lie, he said.

Mr. Naqvi did not make a secret of the fact that the attempt was to create distrust between the Congress and the DMK. At the same time, he dismissed the BJP's problems with the AIADMK leader, Jayalalithaa, in 1999 — when she withdrew support to the Vajpayee Government, leading to its being voted out — as of little consequence. He described the exchange of hot words that followed the fall of the Government as "dostana nok jhok (friendly criticism)."

Asked whether the party would be willing to take the DMK back into the NDA in the post-poll scenario, he said the NDA would get the adequate numbers to form a government on its own. The BJP had never shared the Congress' perception on the allegations made against the DMK in relation to the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.

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