The Hindu : Lyngdoh's remarks uncalled for: BJP

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jan 10, 2003

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Lyngdoh's remarks uncalled for: BJP

By Nina Vyas

NEW DELHI JAN. 9. The warning by the Chief Election Commissioner, J.M. Lyngdoh, that the people of Himachal Pradesh should not be taken in by any communal propaganda by outsiders during the coming elections has provoked the Bharatiya Janata Party into saying that the Constitution guarantees the right to every citizen to move freely in the country and participate in the democratic process.

However, senior party leaders, including the party president, Venkaiah Naidu, made it plain that they did not want to join issue with a constitutional authority.

"I do not see Mr. Lyngdoh's statement as politically important, but a constitutional authority should think before speaking whether he would be transgressing that authority," the party spokesperson, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, said. "We will not campaign on the basis of religion,'' he added.

The view in the BJP was that the remarks were unprovoked and uncalled for, but the party would not make an issue of it.

On the Samajwadi Party's allegation that the Bahujan Samaj Party was collecting large sums of money for the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Mayawati's birth anniversary celebrations, Mr. Naqvi said that raising such issues was "not relevant''.

There was nothing wrong in the supporters of the BSP or its workers collecting money, he added, criticising the SP leader, Mulayam Singh Yadav, for "raising frivolous issues out of frustration as a result of failure to dislodge the Mayawati Government and install his own".

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