NEW DELHI: Less than 15 months ago, 10 Lok Sabha members were disqualified following the "cash-for-questions" scandal, and now a signed-blank-forms-for-starred-questions scandal is threatening to blow in the face of the Narendra Modi Government in Gujarat.

Additional private secretary to the Gujarat Home Minister (the Home portfolio is held by Mr. Modi and the Minister of State for Home is Amit Shah) K.S. Prajapati shot off letters dated January 4, 2007 to all district superintendents of police in the State asking them to get five blank forms for starred questions to be asked in the Legislative Assembly from each MLA. The blank forms were helpfully supplied. They were told that this was being done to ensure that "positive questions" about Gujarat get raised in the Assembly.

That done, the DSPs went about the job as they had been asked to ensure that the signed blank forms reached Mr. Prajapati's office by January 15. The current Assembly session started on February 22 and is scheduled to end on March 29.

According to the Congress MP and chief whip in the Lok Sabha, Madhusudan Mistry, things went wrong when DSP of Kheda district C.J. Bharawad contacted Congress MLA Natwar Sinh Thakor to ask him to sign the blank forms. Mr. Thakor reportedly asked him to give in writing why he needed the blank forms. Mr. Bharawad obliged. That letter from Bharawad referred to Mr. Prajapati's circular letter of January 4 and said that the purpose of collecting blank forms was to ensure, as Mr. Prajapati had said, that only "positive questions' about Gujarat get raised in the Assembly.

Armed with the letter, the Congress MLA Thakor himself posed a starred question wanting to know whether the Government had asked MLAs to sign blank forms. "A response to that starred question was to have been given on March 9, but at the last minute Mr. Thakor found that date changed to March 29," Mr. Mistry said in Parliament on Friday.

He himself intends to raise the matter in Parliament. "It is not merely a state subject even though it pertains to the Gujarat Assembly. It is a question of freedom of speech and the right of elected representatives."

He added that he was not hopeful that the matter would be allowed to be raised in a big way in the Assembly. "However, if one-by-one we allow States to take away the right of elected representatives to ask questions of their choice, the entire democratic system would be endangered. For this reason, I want to raise it in Parliament."

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail