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Sunday, Sep 25, 2005

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National

Presidential secretariat seeks time

Manas Dasgupta

Submission of Narayanan's letter to Vajpayee on Gujarat riots to probe panel

K.R. Narayanan

AHMEDABAD: The Presidential secretariat has sought two weeks time to consult the Central Government on the G.T. Nanavati and K.G. Shah judicial inquiry commission's directive to submit copies of the letters written by the then president, K.R. Narayanan, to the then Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, on the Gujarat riots.

The commission probing into the Godhra train carnage and the post-Godhra communal riots in the State, was told on Saturday that the Presidential secretariat had received its letter for submitting copies of the relevant letters on September 21 and replied seeking two weeks time to consult the Central Government.

The commission had earlier issued a directive to the secretariat to submit the copies by September 24 rejecting its plea of President's privilege and confidentiality of the correspondence under Article 74(2) of the Constitution. The commission had accepted the arguments of the advocate for the riot victims, Mukul Sinha, who had quoted a Supreme Court judgment of 1993 that the presidential privilege was not absolute unless it was against the larger public interest or pertaining to the defence and foreign affairs.

The commission was particular about a letter Mr. Narayanan had written to Mr. Vajpayee asking the Prime Minister to intervene to rush troops to the riot-affected areas in the State. Mr. Narayanan had disclosed about the letter in a media interview earlier but when requested by the commission for cross-examination replied that he had "nothing more to add."

The commission also directed the U.C. Bannerjee committee to submit all the relevant documents to it by October 14. The directive was issued on Saturday after counsel for the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Deepak Shukla, argued before the commission that a "smaller" body should submit all the relevant documents to a "superior investigating authority" to unearth the truth.

The committee appointed by the Railway Ministry to inquire into the Godhra train carnage has already submitted an interim report. The committee told the commission earlier that it could not submit all the relevant documents but the commission would be free to inspect the documents collected by it during the course of the investigation into the train carnage and would consider giving copies of some of the documents specified by the commission.

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