The Hindu : Ayodhya is back because elections are near: Sonia

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jul 25, 2003

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National

Ayodhya is back because elections are near: Sonia

By K.V. Prasad

NEW DELHI JULY 24. Outlining the issues the Congress will need to focus on in the current session of Parliament, the party president, Sonia Gandhi, today sought to link the resurfacing of the Ayodhya issue to the coming Assembly elections in five States later this year.

"The Ayodhya issue is once against dominating — or more accurately is being made to dominate — the headlines. Is it any surprise, given that five important State Assembly elections are due in four months time," Ms. Gandhi asked in her address to the general body of the Congress in Parliament.

Elaborating, she said that since the matter was in court, the judicial verdict should be awaited. The Congress was not against a negotiated settlement and such a settlement "must get legal sanction and sanctity".

The party was also irrevocably committed to the strict enforcement of the Place of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991 that freezes the status of all places of worship other than that at Ayodhya as of August 15, 1947, she said.

In the current monsoon session, the Congress is expected to take up issues concerning distress in agricultural sector, railway safety, defence preparedness, the Action Taken Report (ATR) on the findings of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on Stock and UTI scam, the Best Bakery case of Gujarat as well as important Bills.

Referring to the problems in agriculture, Ms. Gandhi said that while the monsoon appeared to be normal it did not mean that the distress and agony of the farmers and farm workers was over. Relief was being given on a "selective basis" and it was only after repeated public pleas by the leaders of various Opposition parties, including herself, that the Government had announced relief to sugarcane farmers in different States. "However, no systemic reform of the rural credit system has been initiated," she observed.

Stating that railway safety was cause for the "greatest anxiety" she said that the political leadership in this vital sector had "collapsed". In spite of committee reports, railway safety systems had not been upgraded. Turning to the ATR, Ms. Gandhi said that despite very specific observations by the JPC "no accountability has been fixed for this disgraceful episode" that caused misery to lakhs of senior citizens and pensioners, in particular. On the recent China visit of the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, she disputed his claim that his first visit in February 1979 was a landmark one. "Nothing could be further from the truth. He had in fact cut short his visit on account of developments on the Sino-Vietnamese border."

The transformation in Sino-Indian relations started under Indira Gandhi and a paradigm shift took place when Rajiv Gandhi visited China in December, 1988, she said, adding that "it is also gratifying that four decades after castigating Jawaharlal Nehru, Mr. Vajpayee rediscovered him in Beijing while reaffirming India's commitment to Panchsheel".On Iraq, she said that whatever the Government might claim, the party's stand on the issue of sending Indian troops was vindicated. The Congress position was that the troops should not be sent except under the U.N. command or as part of a multinational peacekeeping force under an explicit U.N. mandate.

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