The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Wednesday, May 1, 2002, Chandigarh, India

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TDP seeks Modi’s ouster
Articulates three other demands
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 30
The Vajpayee government’s biggest ally, the TDP, today bitterly criticised the government for its sins of omission and commission over the Gujarat issue and placed four demands, including removal of Chief Minister Narendra Modi and not holding assembly poll immediately in the troubled state.

HYDERABAD: The TDP politburo on Tuesday night authorised party supremo N. Chandrababu Naidu to decide the TDP’s stand on the censure motion, entailing voting, after Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s reply to the debate on the motion. UNI

Two other TDP demands articulated by the party leader K. Yerran Naidu in the Lok Sabha were a direction to the Gujarat Government from the Centre under Article 355 of the Constitution for the protection of lives and properties of the minority community and providing immediate relief and rehabilitation to the affected people in the state.

Mr Naidu was keen to make his speech after the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, gave his reply but Deputy Speaker P.M. Sayeed turned down the request.

Participating in the debate on the Opposition-sponsored censure motion on Gujarat, Mr Naidu said the people had “lost faith in the government in Gujarat.” He described the continuing violence as a “blot” on the nation’s collective conscience.

Though Mr Yerran Naidu made it clear that his party would take a stand regarding the motion only after the Prime Minister’s speech, Mr Yerran Naidu dropped ample hints of what his party was up to when he said communal violence had repeatedly taken place during the Congress “misrule”.

He also described the Congress as a “great champion of duplicity.” Maintaining that it was Mr Rajiv Gandhi who first carried out “shilanayas” at Ayodhya, he attacked the P.V. Narasimha Rao Government for having remained a “silent spectator” to the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992.

He said his party had in the past come out against the “saffronisation” of education, condemned the Babri Masjid demolition and made it clear that the government should abide by either court verdict on the Ram Temple construction or any mutual settlement should be arrived at between contending parties.

He voiced concern over violence in Gujarat which was continuing despite the deployment of Army there.

“This violence is worse than that during Partition. This is not the time to go for elections as the situation is not proper,” Mr Yerran Naidu said.

PM rejects Omar offer to quit
NC to abstain from voting on censure motion
Tribune News Service and PTI

New Delhi, April 30
National Conference leader and Minister of State for External Affairs Omar Abdullah today offered to resign from the Union Council of Ministers but Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee rejected the offer.

Mr Abdullah made the offer on moral grounds in view of the decision of his party to abstain from voting on the censure motion in the Lok Sabha on Gujarat. The offer was made orally when Mr Abdullah met the Prime Minister this afternoon.

According to Mr Abdullah, his father and Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah had written to the Prime Minister on April 27 and conveyed that since his son was a minister in the Vajpayee government, he was willing to quit the ministership on moral grounds. What he did today during his meeting with Mr Vajpayee was only a verbal reiteration of what his father had written about to the Prime Minister three days ago, Mr Abdullah said.

Mr Omar Abdullah also said he had not given his resignation in writing and Mr Vajpayee had told him that he would get back to him after due consideration. The final decision would be the Prime Minister’s, he added.

Mr Abdullah was categoric that his offer to resign had nothing to do with the reported moves of his party to install him as NC President and project him as the chief ministerial candidate when Jammu and Kashmir goes to polls later this year.

He made it clear that the language of the censure motion was such that his party could not vote in favour of the motion. At the same time, the plight of the minority community in Gujarat was such that his party could not vote against it either. That is why his party had taken the decision to ask its five members in the Lok Sabha to abstain from voting.

Earlier today, the five-member National Conference decided to abstain from the voting on the Opposition censure motion in the Lok Sabha on Gujarat.

A day after another BJP ally, the four-member Lok Janshakti headed by Mr Ram Vilas Paswan pulled out of the alliance and decided to support the motion, Mr Abdullah and party leader in Lok Sabha Ali Mohammed Naik met Mr Vajpayee and conveyed the party’s decision to abstain.