Date:02/07/2002 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2002/07/02/stories/2002070204580100.htm

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Return to Hindutva agenda: Cong.

By Our New Delhi Bureau

NEW DELHI JULY 1. The Opposition today criticised the Cabinet reshuffle, effected by the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, with the Congress terming it a "retrograde" step and the CPI (M) viewing it as an "attempt to hide the abysmal performance of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Government."

Billing the reshuffle as a move that signalled the erosion of the office of the Prime Minister, the eclipse of the National Democratic Alliance by the BJP, and the BJP's return to its Hindutva agenda, the Congress said that there was a "tactical method'' to the seeming "political madness.''

On the elevation of the Union Home Minister, L. K. Advani, the Congress spokesman, S. Jaipal Reddy, said it was "more a demotion for Mr. Vajpayee'' and evidence of the non-Hindutva parties losing their bargaining leverage. "The NDA Government is in name only; it is a Government of the BJP, by the BJP.'' The non-Hindutva parties had been reduced to the status of "bonded labour,'' he said, adding that the reshuffle heralded the "total eclipse'' of the NDA and the "total dominance'' of the BJP.

Referring to the "unedifying spectacle'' of the Trinamool Congress leader, Mamata Banerjee, and Nitish Kumar of the Samata Party asking for the same portfolio, he said: "Schisms and splits have been created among the non-Hindutva parties to deny them their legitimate due.'' On the BJP's return to its Hindutva agenda, the Congress said that the party had deployed "its divisive ideology to erase the memory of its misrule'' which had led to electoral debacles in successive State Assembly elections. Billing the Gaurav Rath Yatra in Gujarat and the appointment of Vinay Katiyar as the president of the Uttar Pradesh unit of the BJP as part of a larger agenda, Mr. Reddy said there was a "tactical method to this political madness.''

The former Union Minister and Lok Janshakti Party chief, Ram Vilas Paswan, said that the elevation of Mr. Advani indicated the emergence of a parallel power centre and that the Prime Minister was unable to carry on with his work. The CPI (M) said that the reshuffle was yet another indication of the BJP's assertion "to the detriment of the NDA partners.'' The elaborate exercise undertaken by Mr. Vajpayee could not "hide the abysmal performance of the BJP-led Government,'' the party politburo member, Prakash Karat, said.

The Samajwadi Party charged that the reshuffle had brought BJP politics to where it was and that the allies had been sidelined. The party spokesman, Amar Singh, said that it was no longer an NDA Government, but one over which the BJP had taken control.

Meanwhile, the office-bearers of the Janata Dal (United) said that the party should get ``adequate'' representation in the Council of Ministers.