The Hindu : NDA cracks widen as Gujarat debate is inconclusive

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, May 01, 2002

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NDA cracks widen as Gujarat debate is inconclusive

By Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI APRIL 30. Chaotic scenes marked today's marathon debate on the censure motion on Gujarat in the Lok Sabha which continued several hours past midnight, with the ruling party benches showing more aggression than logic in their arguments and some cracks appearing in their alliance.

Most of the allies joined in the "sack Modi" chorus and the Opposition made a direct attack on the Vajpayee Government for its failure to stop the continuing carnage in Gujarat and for abdicating its constitutional responsibility.

What just about saved the day for the Government was that its "friends" indicated firmly that they would stop short of voting with the Opposition — they were not yet ready to stand up and be counted.

At the time of going to press, the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, was yet to respond to the sharp attacks made on him, the alleged inaction of his Government and that of the Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled Gujarat Government.

While Ram Vilas Paswan's Lok Janshakti exited the Government yesterday, the National Conference leader and Minister of State for External Affairs, Omar Abdullah, offered his resignation today even as his party decided to abstain from voting on the motion.

The Janata Dal (United) found it difficult to hide its internal turmoil and the BJP's new found love, the Bahujan Samaj Party, was also unsparing in its condemnation of the massacre of the minorities.

What became obvious during the course of the speeches, the sparring, and the shouting was that the allies and the parties "friendly"' to the National Democratic Alliance were one with the Opposition in their strong condemnation of the continuing murder and arson in Gujarat and their demand for the removal of the Chief Minister, Narendra Modi.

The Telugu Desam leader, K. Yerran Naidu, categorically demanded Mr. Modi's dismissal, but he also harped on the need for "stability" at the Centre. Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress demanded Mr. Modi's ouster, praised Mr. Paswan for quitting the Government but then she switched suddenly, predictably, to attack the West Bengal Government for "atrocities on minorities."

The Leader of the Opposition, Sonia Gandhi, led a focussed attack, spelling out in some detail incidents of rape and murder perpetrated in Gujarat. She appealed to the "nobler instincts" of Mr. Vajpayee, demanding that Gujarat be "put on notice under Article 355 of the Constitution", and Mr. Modi be dismissed. "Let us act in a manner that once again the country becomes a beacon for respecting and celebrating diversity,'' she said. But not before she took on the Prime Minister.

He had blamed Parliament for not condemning the Godhra incident unitedly, but he himself had failed as Leader of the House "to take a lead in the matter" by not bringing a resolution before the House, she noted.

The unsparing Opposition attack received an unexpected boost from the former Prime Minister, Chandra Shekhar, who charged that the Cabinet Minister, Uma Bharti, had spoken more like a "Nazi volunteer" than a `sanyasin'. The signal was that her speech was a disgrace to her saffron robes and that the BJP in Gujarat was attempting to do what the Nazis did in Germany.

The treasury benches focussed on the acts of omission and commission by previous Congress regimes— the riots witnessed in Gujarat during Congress rule and the attacks on Sikhs in Delhi in 1984. There were acrimonious scenes when Vaiko of the MDMK sharply referred to the 1984 Sikh massacres. The Congress responded by charging him with being close to the assassins of Rajiv Gandhi.

Acrimony was also witnessed when the Samata leader and Defence Minister, George Fernandes, said the Congress had "presided over hundreds of riots across the country in which thousands had perished".

The Samajwadi Party leader, Mulayam Singh Yadav, was the first to speak as the motion stood in the name of a member of his party. "How many more bodies have to be counted in Gujarat, and how many more incidents of arson you want before you act," he asked Mr. Vajpayee.

Those supporting the Government should remember that the issue at hand was "not the survival of one government or another, but the survival of the nation," he said.

The CPI(M) leader, Somnath Chatterjee, warned: Make no mistake, Gujarat was witnessing a "State-sponsored genocide, masterminded by Narendra Modi".

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