The Hindu : National : Vajpayee against dismissal of Mulayam Ministry

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jul 05, 2004

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National

Vajpayee against dismissal of Mulayam Ministry

By J.P. Shukla

LUCKNOW, JULY 4. The former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, today said that his party was opposed to the dismissal of the Uttar Pradesh Government headed by the Samajwadi Party leader, Mulayam Singh Yadav, despite its performance being unsatisfactory.

Addressing a news conference at the conclusion of his two-day visit to his Lok Sabha constituency, Mr. Vajpayee said the BJP was in the Opposition and fulfilling its responsibility by exposing the failures of the Uttar Pradesh Government. The law and order situation in the State was unsatisfactory. Still he did not agree with the opinion that the State Government should be dismissed.

The dismissal of Governors of four States indicated the intentions of the Centre to target State Governments run by Opposition parties, but the dismissal of Governments did not appear possible. There were examples in the past when a dismissed State Government had been reinstated at the intervention of the court. Assembly elections were held only recently and it would not be easy to dismiss a Government having majority in the Assembly.

Gujarat riots

Mr. Vajpayee rejected a suggestion that he had been isolated in the BJP because of his views on the Gujarat riots. Efforts were being made to reason out that the riots were the main cause for the BJP defeat in the Lok Sabha elections. He himself had contradicted the view. Opponents of the BJP had indulged in propaganda to prove that his party had been defeated because of the riots.

Clarifying his statement, he said he had only stated that the propaganda of Opposition parties had damaged the cause of the BJP during the elections. The BJP itself had never made the riots an election issue.

Mr. Vajpayee said the Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, recently told him that it was wrong to say that police had been directed to perpetrate excesses during the riots. Mr. Vajpayee accepted that the long period of campaigning had caused damage to the BJP and in Uttar Pradesh certain organisational weaknesses had come to light. Now efforts would be made to remedy them, he said.

The BJP leader rejected the Congress charge that his party was adopting double standards on the question of including "tainted Ministers'' in the Union Government. There was no `tainted Minister' in his Government, he said adding that if a Minister was charge-sheeted in cases of corruption or heinous crimes, he must resign. His party had named the `tainted Ministers' in the present Government, mentioning the charges against them.

If the Congress had cases against Ministers in the NDA Government, it could do the same. The Congress, however, came back to the Ayodhya case all the time. The two issues could not be bracketed. The Ayodhya case was pending in court and his Government had never interfered with the process of law.

Asked about the involvement of George Fernandes in the Tehelka expose, Mr. Vajpayee said before taking back Mr. Fernandes, he had talked to the Chairman of the Commission inquiring into the issue and was told that there was no prima facie case against Mr. Fernandes.

With reference to the recent statement by the Shiv Sena leader, Bal Thackeray, that the disputed site at Ayodhya should be used to build a memorial for Mangal Pandey, he said Mr. Thackeray had expressed such views in the past too. But these were not accepted by the people. In his opinion, a Ram temple should be built at Ayodhya but this should be done through a negotiated settlement or a court verdict. Earlier in the day, Mr. Vajpayee received delegations of party workers at his suite in the VVIP Guest House.

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