National

Gujarat officials wake up on eve of PM visit

By Manas Dasgupta

AHMEDABAD APRIL 3. The Gujarat Government has been caught napping with the last-minute changes in the programme of the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee's visit to the riot-hit areas of the State tomorrow.

State Government officials said the change in the schedule had been made by the Prime Minister's Office but no reason had been assigned. Sources here say that it could be intended to take the State Government by surprise so that it did not get enough time to sweep the dirt under the carpet and the Prime Minister could see for himself the real situation and the problems facing the riot-hit.

While the officials were engaged in a flurry of activity in the Dariakhan Ghummat and Mehdi Kuan camps in the last few days, preparing the inmates for Mr. Vajpayee's visit — the road leading to the camps were repaired and re-laid, officials made a beeline to the camps to solve the inmates' problems, additional temporary toilets were put up, cash distributed and many complaints attended to — they were taken by surprise when Mr. Vajpayee's office announced that he would be visiting the Shah Alam Roza and the Kankaria relief camps instead.

However, not to be outwitted, both the BJP Government and the Congress-controlled Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation have done their best to give a face-lift to the two camps. The authorities shifted the entire machinery 10 km across the city to Shah Alam — housing the riot-hit Muslims — and Kankaria, sheltering the Hindus. Where no officials were seen in the last 35 days, hundreds of Government and municipal corporation officials landed at the two camps today.

A long queue of people was seen at the Shah Alam camp where the Government distributed cash on a war footing, and that too, without bothering about the technicalities of verifying the identities of the inmates — a time-consuming process. And to keep the organisers of the camp in good humour, three cheques, valued at over Rs. 11 lakhs, were issued on a single day to take care of the complaints about foodgrain shortage.

While about 8,000 inmates of the camp were provided with eight makeshift toilets all these days, 12 additional toilets were put up today and the inmates were promised mobile toilet vans. A

2,000-litre capacity water tank was installed, besides innumerable small Syntex tanks, to overcome the problem of water shortage. Tankers were rushed to the camp to maintain a steady supply.

Not only was the road leading to the camp repaired, even the underground pipeline was changed. For the first time, the inmates witnessed fogging operations to keep mosquitoes and flies away. As many as 16 medical teams, drawn from the nearby rural areas, were posted in the camp to attend to the health problems of the inmates, particularly in view of the death of a two-month old baby due to dehydration in the Dariakhan Ghummat camp today.

The amused inmates of the camp said "at last the Government has waken up from deep slumber.'' Pointing out that the authorities had so far failed to respond to the distress signals from the riot-affected, Shafi Memon, an organiser of the Shah Alam camp, who is due to meet Mr. Vajpayee, said the flurry of activity would not deter him from presenting the peoples' problems in the "right perspective."

It is not clear whether the Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, will accompany Mr. Vajpayee during his visit to the minority camp. When approached by the security personnel, the organisers apparently refused to take responsibility for Mr. Modi's security. Mr. Vajpayee is scheduled to leave for Godhra immediately on arrival from Delhi and return here to visit the two camps before meeting the officials and the14-member all-party relief committee.

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