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INDIAN TV REPORTS OF CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE AGAINST INDIAN GOVT. TRYING TO BENEFIT FROM ANTI-MUSLIMS RIOTS! by Saima Alvi 07 April 2002 19:27 UTC |
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DAWN INTERNET EDITION (dawn.com) 07 April 2002 Sunday 'Modi tried to exploit riots' By Jawed Naqvi =========================================================================== NEW DELHI, April 6: Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, widely suspected of conniving with Hindu mobs to massacre Muslim civilians in a five-week- old and as yet unabated frenzied violence against the minority community , had considered holding snap polls to benefit from the communal polarization, the NDTV channel said in an exclusive report on Saturday. The channel's senior correspondent, Rajdeep Sardesai, said he had clinching evidence that Modi probed the possibility of elections way ahead of the polls ordinarily due only in February next year. "NDTV now has clinching evidence that the Narendra Modi government in Gujarat had serious plans for a snap poll right after the recent riots in the state," Sardesai reported even as news trickled in of five more deaths since the night in the communal upsurge. "In fact", the reporter said, "the BJP had done a survey to find out whether they would gain votes in the current situation. Till now Modi had been dismissing such reports as canards spread by his opponents." The document dated March 17 shows that the state BJP had gone through an elaborate exercise to gauge the public mood and plan for early elections with Modi personally supervising it. Three senior BJP leaders were sent to each district with a four-page questionnaire to assess whether the party workers felt the situation was ripe for an election. The questions were: Will early elections benefit the BJP? In which constituencies will they benefit? Will be able to translate the current mood into votes in an election? After the Godhra tragedy, what is the mood among our workers? What impact are the riot-related arrests having on our workers, and how will it affect elections? "Top BJP sources in Gujarat said that the feedback was positive, and at a meeting in Gandhinagar on March 18, Modi had stated that he was in favour of a snap poll," Sardesai said. When Modi was asked about snap poll, he initially denied his role in this election exercise, and then threw the ball in Prime Minister Vajpayee's court. "The prime minister's word is final on this. I did not ask him about the snap poll, I'm only focusing on relief operations in the state. I have no role in this, the prime minister's word is final," Modi said. Indeed, it appears that only after a meeting with the prime minister in Delhi two weeks ago, that Modi was made to abandon his election plan, with Vajpayee making it clear that rebuilding Gujarat should be the chief minister's top priority. Meanwhile, three people were killed when police fired to disperse clashing groups of Hindus and Muslims and two people were stabbed to death in Ahmedabad. Authorities imposed an indefinite curfew in Watva and Sabarmati areas of Ahmedabad city. Curfew has been clamped in 30 areas in the state. Sporadic violence has continued even after the prime minister made an anguished plea during visit to the state on Thursday to end the bloodletting and "stop the poison of religious violence." Official estimates put the death toll at 825, but non-governmental groups say it could be more than 2,000. It seems while Modi planned to hold elections, reports from Gujarat spoke of the threat of starvation that looms large in violence-hit Ahmedabad where people are forced to live a life of virtual imprisonment inside their respective colonies. "I am still scared to go out of the colony," complained Safi Bhai of Shah-e- Alam area, which the prime minister visited two days ago. The forced isolation of the people has resulted in acute food shortage in many areas. The callousness of the BJP's Gujarat administration is taking its toll on the prime minister's credibility with his own coalition partners, who privately admit that the violence in Gujarat has irretrievably damaged the national image, alienated many of them from their Muslim constituency and resulted in a sharp drop in foreign investment in the country. "Earlier this week, when the Andhra Pradesh cabinet met in Hyderabad, several ministers told Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu it was time the Telugu Desam Party consider severing its links with the BJP," one report said. -- Saima Alvi Research Assistant Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) Opposite Sector U, DHA, Lahore-54792 Tel.: 5722670-79; Ext.: 2165
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