M A I N   N E W S

Hostage deal irks BJP men
Heads must roll, say hawks
From T.V. Lakshminarayan
Tribune News Service

NEW DELHI, Jan 5 — The National Democratic Government’s tomtoming of “success” at Kandahar is not shared by all sections of the Bharatiya Janata Party, especially hardliners, who feel that for a party which has been harping for the past five decades on making India a “hard” state and which claims to provide a government with a “difference”, the hijackers’ triumph at getting the release of three proclaimed offenders of Indian law in exchange of 155 hostages, has come as a body blow.

They want responsibility to be fixed and heads to roll for what they term as a “Himalayan blunder” of the government.

The debate within the BJP over the hijacking episode has intensified after party strongman and Union Home Minister, L.K. Advani admitted at an Iftaar party hosted by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee last evening that the BJP had been hurt most by the hijacking episode.

Providing food for thought for the hardliners in the BJP has been a recent statement by the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) chief, Prof Rajendra Singh, that the release of three dreaded terrorists to secure the freedom of the hostages aboard the Indian Airlines plane had exposed the Hindu society’s “cowardice” and would demoralise the security forces.

In an interview to ‘Panchjanya’, mouthpiece of the RSS, he said the incident had taught two lessons — the Government should not take any decision under coercion and the Hindu society should become brave and courageous otherwise such incidents were bound to recur.

A senior member in the BJP pointed out that there were no contradiction in the statements by Mr Advani and Prof Rajendra Singh and both were correct in their own way.

He pointed out that once the Indian Airlines plane had been taken to Kandahar, the Indian Government had no other option but to strike a deal.

Having secured the release of the hostages, the government should now see where it had gone wrong and who was responsible for the lapses like delayed reaction and allowing the plane to take off from the Amritsar airport.

Officially, senior party Vice-President, J.P. Mathur said the recent hijacking incident has alerted people and the government to be more careful and the administration in particular to attune itself to actively respond to any new developing situation.

“All failures of the hijack drama should be looked into and steps taken to eradicate possibilities of any lapse in the future”, he said.

On Mr Advani’s statement, Mr Mathur said the party’s image of being very tough had somewhat been temporarily damaged. He said that the real character of the BJP being tough, the image would be revived in the days to come.

Another party member said the government could still send a signal that it was not weak by taking action against officials who failed to react at various stages of the hijacking drama.

There is near consensus in the party that bureaucrats were solely responsible for all lapses and there was a need for drastic changes.

A party functionary pointed out that the hijackers were actively supported by the Pakistan Government and the incident should not be seen as an act by a few men.

He pointed out that even when India had asked for permission to use the Pakistan airspace to fly External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh by a special plane to Afghanistan, the Pakistani authorities had insisted on knowing the details of the passengers travelling with him.

“They probably wanted to make sure that there were no armed commandos in the aircraft”, he said, adding this proved Pakistan’s complicity in the affair.