The Hindu : I should have done more, admits Vajpayee

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, May 02, 2002

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I should have done more, admits Vajpayee

By Javed M Ansari

NEW DELHI May 1. The Vajpayee Government eventually won the battle of numbers in Tuesday's marathon and often acrimonious debate on Gujarat under Rule 184 in the Lok Sabha but lost the debate. When the Samajwadi party-sponsored censure motion was put to vote close to 4 a.m. on Wednesday, 276 members of the 466 present in the House voted against it, while only 182 supported the motion.

The smile was back on the grim-faced treasury benches which had suffered the mortification of their largest supporting partner, the Telugu Desam Party, walking out in protest against the Prime Minister's refusal to concede their demand for the sacking of Narendra Modi. This, in addition to the resignation of Omar Abdullah of the National Conference from the Union Cabinet earlier in the day, and the subsequent decision of the NC to abstain from voting on the motion. The issue also led to fissures in the six-member Janata Dal(United).

The Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, who spoke at the fag-end of the debate, sidestepped the demand for the resignation of the Gujarat Chief Minister and firmly denied that he kept changing his stand, or that he had spoken in different voices in Goa and Gujarat.

The Prime Minister said he was pained by allegations that he had spoken against Muslims and Islam. "Why should I keep changing my stand, what have I to gain now, I have never differentiated on the basis of caste or religion, this charge threatens to take away all that I have stood for all my life,'' he said.

Mr. Vajpayee, however, admitted that he had faulted in blaming Parliament for not reacting forcefully enough to the Godhra incident (of burning of Ram Sevaks by miscreants which triggered the violence all over Gujarat). "I made a mistake, I accept it, perhaps I should have done more,'' he said, urging the House to forget what had happened and look ahead. "Mrs. Gandhi has appealed to me to rise above party politics, I cannot do it alone, she must also rise with me; If India comes first, we must all rise above it.'' He was ready to accept the Opposition suggestion for adopting a common resolution on the issue if the House agreed, but the move fell through with the TDP decision to walk out in protest.

Criticising the media, Mr. Vajpayee said that what he had seen and heard about the Gujarat riots was madness and appeared particularly pained at the manner in which women had been targeted and subjected to sexual abuse and torture. "If this disease is not checked, it will destroy our society,'' he said. He, however, admitted that a delegation of women that had gone to the State was of the view that the tales of crimes against women were "exaggerated".

Significantly, the Union Home Minister, L.K. Advani, in his short intervention distanced himself from the position taken by the Defence Minister, George Fernandes, that the violence and cases of rape were "nothing new" and had been taking place for the last 55 years. He also admitted that the riots had worked to the advantage of Pakistan. "I didn't like it, I am pained by what happened,'' Mr. Advani said. The incidents were a blemish on the NDA Government's record of providing a regime free of communal riots. "Our four-year record has been undone,'' he lamented.

However, he defended Mr. Modi saying that his removal would not solve the Gujarat problem. "If for a moment we believed that the state (Government) was behind it, we would have got rid of him.''

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