The Hindu : National : Advani launches `Nyay Yatra' at Varanasi

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Dec 07, 2005

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National

Advani launches `Nyay Yatra' at Varanasi

Venkitesh Ramakrishnan

Initiative aimed at "getting justice to the family of slain party MLA Krishnanand Rai"

FLORAL TRIBUTE: BJP president L.K. Advani pays homage to party MLA Krishnanand Rai, who was killed on November 29, in Varanasi on Tuesday. — PHOTO: PTI

VARANASI: On the 13th anniversary day of the demolition of Babri Masjid, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president L.K. Advani launched yet another Hindutva oriented political yatra in the eastern Uttar Pradesh districts of Varanasi and Ghazipur. The initiative titled `Nyay Yatra' has the stated objectives of getting justice to the family of slain party MLA Krishnanand Rai and highlighting the "rampant criminalisation of politics" in Uttar Pradesh.

However, the Hindutva orientation of the programme was evident from the symbolism attached to the day the yatra was launched as well as from the slogans raised by BJP supporters during Mr. Advani's day-long trip.

The fact that several villages and small towns in the Varanasi-Ghaziabad route traversed by Mr. Advani on Tuesday have witnessed sporadic communal violence in the past 10 days also added to the Hindutva dimension of the Nyay Yatra. According to the police as many as four places of Muslim worship in Ghazipur district have been targeted in this violence.

Mr. Rai was murdered along with six others in Ghazipur on November 30 allegedly by a mafia group directed by Mukthar Ansari, Independent MLA from Ghazipur. According to police records in Varanasi and Ghazipur, Mr. Rai was also associated with another mafia group led by one Brajesh Singh, and the rivalry between the groups of Ansari and Singh was the main reason behind the killing.

However, leaders of the BJP campaign, including former Chief Minister Rajnath Singh who has been sitting on an indefinite dharna before the Varanasi Collectorate for the past 13 days seeking an inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), have branded Mr. Rai's killing as a political murder. The BJP leadership has also alleged that the Mulayam Singh Yadav led Samajwadi Party (SP) government is protecting "Mr Ansari" as part of its minorityism and vote bank politics.

Arriving in Varanasi on Tuesday morning, Mr. Advani first addressed the Rajnath Singh led BJP dharna and later proceeded to Mr. Rai's Mohammadabad constituency in Ghazipur district. He also visited Mr. Rai's bereaved family in the late MLA's native village.

He maintained in all the speeches during the trip that the Nyay Yatra was a reflection of the BJP's determination to fight injustice. He added that a similar struggle was being waged by the party at the Centre too against the Congress and its Government, which has "brought unprecedented shame on the country by hatching corrupt deals in foreign countries to make money for the party." The BJP president expressed confidence that these "justice struggles" would reap success.

Stressing on the symbolism around December 6, Mr. Advani said that the people of the country can not be happy unless a grand Ram temple is built at Ayodhya.

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