NEW DELHI, 6 April — Words cannot substitute action, said critics who dismissed Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s Gujarat visit as a “futile exercise” and a “mockery” for “political mileage.”
Secular credentials of the prime minister stand tainted by his failure to take action against the Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi, despite the state government having been severely indicted by the National Human Rights Commission.
Dismissing Vajpayee’s visit as a futile exercise, opposition parties lashed out at his failure to dismiss Modi. Questioning the validity of Vajpayee’s emotionally-charged words, the Congress party leader
Ambika Soni said: “If the prime minister was really ashamed and unable to face the world, the minimum he ought to have done was to throw Modi out.” With the visit having failed to achieve anything, she described it as “an exercise in futility.”
“Unless he is given marching orders, whatever the prime minister says will sound vacuous,” Congress spokesman Jaipal Reddy said. Failure to dismiss Modi also amounts to Vajpayee pampering him, said angry opposition members. Modi “should have been in jail,” said communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) leader Somnath Chatterjee. He accused Vajpayee of pampering Modi and having “failed the country, the people and those who need all the protection, security and care.”
Describing the Gujarat visit as “BJP’s damage-control exercise aimed at political mileage,” Chatterjee said: “We are now even more disappointed with the prime minister’s handling of the situation.” Criticizing the visit as “a mockery,” Chatterjee said it had taken Vajpayee “five weeks to feel ashamed.” Rather than take action against Modi, Vajpayee has given him a certificate, Chatterjee said. Vajpayee visited Gujarat “under the dictates of RSS,” he said.
“They told him to go and give Modi a certificate. All this was done to make the RSS happy,” Chatterjee added.
Samajwadi party leader Amar Singh said Vajpayee had given “a clean chit to Modi under pressure from the Sangh Parivar,” the ideological mentor of the BJP. A Communist Party (CPI) leader, D. Raja, said Vajpayee’s visit, five weeks after the bloodshed erupted, came too late and called it a “well-crafted public relations exercise”.
Newspapers, however, yesterday praised Vajpayee’s heartfelt speech to victims of sectarian riots in Gujarat but criticized his refusal to dismiss the local government for its inability to control the violence.
“Modi by his side, PM snubs his government,” ran the headline in the Hindustan Times referring to Vajpayee’s rebuke to Modi during his visit. But the newspaper also noted that the prime minister had said there was no plan to sack the chief minister.” One man was killed and several others injured in fresh violence yesterday in the state where Hindu-Muslim clashes had claimed over 800 lives.
“PM lets Modi off with a few words of wisdom,” said the Indian Express noting that Vajpayee had advised the chief minister to follow the “ethics of governance” and not discriminate against Muslims. A report in the Asian Age said the RSS had decided to make sure Modi, who is a member of the RSS and the BJP, would remain at the helm of the administration in the state.
During his visit Vajpayee viewed the burned compartment of the train which the mob had torched.
