PM writes to President on RSS membership issue

By Harish Khare

NEW DELHI, FEB. 19. The Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, is understood to have replied to the President, Mr. K.R. Narayanan in response to a Rashtrapati Bhavan query on allowing the Government employees to participate in the activities of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh.

The Prime Minister is said to have reassured the President that the Union Government had no intention of lifting the ban on the Central Government employees on joining the ``socio-cultural organisation'', but at the same time Mr. Vajpayee is understood to have cited ``constitutional'' difficulties in asking the Gujarat Government to reconsider its decision to let its employees, if they so desire, join the controversial organisation.

A ``clarification'' had been sought early this month by the President, after the Congress(I) and other political parties registered their protest with him over the Gujarat Government's decision. There were open hints by the BJP Chief Ministers in Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh that they too might follow the Gujarat example; and, the icing for the ``hidden agenda'' cake was provided by the Union Home Minister, Mr. L. K. Advani, who openly suggested that the Central Government employees need not be deprived of the beneficial blessings of participation in the RSS activities. All these statements - calculated trail-balloons - made the Opposition as well as the BJP allies see as the unraveling of the ``hidden agenda''.

Though from the very beginning sources in the Rashtrapati Bhavan were keen to downplay the ``controversy'', the President's communication was seen - by the Government's partisans - as yet another case of what they disapproving call the Rashtrapati Bhavan pro-activism. In fact, the BJP, its official organs and its drum-beaters in the media have been waging an open propaganda war against the President, especially after his warning against tinkering with the Constitution.

Mr. Vajpayee has now sought to repair the relationship with Rashtrapati Bhavan. As a matter of fact, the Prime Minister has already made a public announcement of his government's intention not to lift the ban on Central Government employees; in a rather deft move, he had prevailed upon the RSS chief, Mr. Rajinder Singh, to state that his organisation had never even asked that the ban be lifted.

In his communication to Mr. Narayanan, the Prime Minister has de- linked himself and his Government from Gujarat, invoking the much-convenient constitutional space available to a Chief Minister. The argument, more or less, is that it was a Gujarat Government order in the first place that put the RSS on the list of prohibited organisation, another Gujarat government has undone that classification; the Central Government, was neither involved in the first place nor is concerned now.

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