M A I N   N E W S

PM backs Gujarat move on RSS
Tribune News Service

NEW DELHI, Feb 5 — For the first time since the controversy over the decision of the Gujarat Government to lift the ban on its employees to take part in the RSS camp broke out, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee today openly defended it.

Even as President, Mr K.R. Narayanan referred the matter to the Vajpayee government, the Prime Minister described the RSS as a “social and cultural organisation’’, a statement condemned by the Congress.

“Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh is not a political outfit. It is a cultural and social organisation and I don’t think objections should be raised on anybody joining it,” Mr Vajpayee told correspondents after inaugurating the World Book Fair here today.

Asked to comment on reports that the President had sought clarification from the Centre on the Gujarat Government’s decision, Mr Vajpayee said the “government’s stand will be made known to the President. I am confident this will satisfy him.”

According to a report the President had sought clarification from the Vajpayee government on the Gujarat government move and reportedly posed specific queries on the Centre’s role in the decision to lift the 14-year-old ban.

The communication is reported to be accompanied by memoranda submitted by the Congress and other opposition parties on the issue recently.

(A news agency quoted a Rashtrapati Bhavan spokesman saying that the President had merely forwarded to the government the memoranda submitted to him by the Congress and other opposition parties along with a covering letter.)

The presidential move comes nearly a week after the Congress held a demonstration in the Capital during which the party chief, Mrs Sonia Gandhi, and several senior leaders courted arrest protesting the “saffronisation of bureaucracy’’ by the government.

Meanwhile, the Congress today sharpened its attack on the government and the Prime Minister and urged the partners of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) to take note of Mr Vajpayee’s statement.

“This government should not stand on prestige. After Mr Vajpayee’s statement it appears the Prime Minister has made it a matter of prestige. Perhaps he is donning the mask which the Sangh Parivar wants him to’’, Congress spokesman Anil Shastri said at the party headquarters.

He said Mr Vajpayee’s statement appeared to be a major deviation from the NDA manifesto and that it wanted the NDA partners to take note of it.“Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by a RSS member and to call the organisation social and cultural needs to be condemned,’’ Mr Shastri said.

The Central Civil Service (Conduct) Rules, 1964, prohibit government servants from joining any political party or organisation which takes part in politics, subscribes in aid of or assists in any other manner, any political movement or activity.

Meanwhile, several opposition parties criticised the Prime Minister for coming out in defence of the RSS and the Gujarat Government decision.

The Politburo of the CPI(M) in a statement here also disagreed with the Prime Minister saying that the RSS was a rabid communal organisation committed to Hindutva in the country. It controlled the BJP, the CPI (M) said.