Congress shoots at Modi from Vajpayee shoulders

The Congress on Friday raised some eyebrows when it posted a photograph of senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and praised him on its website as part of an attack on Narendra Modi, the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate for the Lok Sabha elections.

Vajpayee, 89, who was prime minister in two stints — for 13 days in 1996 and then from 1998 to 2004, is leading a retired life in the capital and said to be quite unwell and unable to speak.

“Nobody to remind BJP of its Rajdharma (duties of a ruler)” said the title of the article on the Congress website’s front page, with a photograph of Vajpayee. Vajpayee had, after the 2002 post-Godhra violence in Gujarat, in which more than a thousand people, mainly Muslims, were killed, said that Modi had failed to follow his “Rajdharma” as chief minister of the state.

“No leader in the BJP can match the stature of former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee,” the article said.

It said Vajpayee was clear that the reason for the defeat of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections was Modi’s “failure to control the communal pogrom in his state in 2002”.

“He believed that the party will lose its credibility unless it took action against Mr Modi,” the article said. The article went on to quote Vajpayee as saying that some people had wanted to remove Modi as chief minister of Gujarat and that he was also of the same opinion.

According to it, this had been confirmed by Jaswant Singh, who served as external affairs minister and finance minister in Vajpayee’s cabinet and who was recently expelled by the BJP.

It said Jaswant Singh had stated that, in 2002, Vajpayee had even threatened to resign unless the BJP took action against Modi.

“The fundamental cause of Mr Vajpayee’s pain was that Modi didn’t perform his Rajdharma. He did not fulfil his fundamental duty as the chief minister: protecting the lives of the people of Gujarat. Towards the last ebb of the Gujarat riots, Vajpayee urged Modi to ‘observe Rajdharma and not discriminate on the basis of caste, creed or religion”.“It is evident that Mr Vajpayee believed that the Gujarat CM had been not only inept but downright partisan in his handling of the riots. Not just the handling of the riots, Mr Vajpayee believed that the Modi government wasn’t doing enough to provide relief and rehabilitation to those who had been displaced during the riots,” it said.

The article quoted a newspaper report to say that Vajpayee had written a series of letters to Modi, instructing him to do all that is necessary for the riot victims, but to no avail. “This raises the question that how can a person whom the tallest leader of the BJP wanted removed as chief minister, be the party’s prime ministerial candidate? Will a chief minister who failed to protect his citizens, who discriminated between people on the basis of religion, who made a mockery of people’s suffering, ever make a good prime minister?

“How can a person who failed in his Rajdharma as chief minister ever ensure a peaceful and prosperous future for the people of India?” it asked.

The article said the BJP, having found a new icon in Modi, was working hard to distance itself from the Vajpayee legacy. It said Vajpayee’s niece, Karuna Shukla, was forced to leave the party and is now with the Congress. Jaswant Singh has been expelled, while Dr Subramanian Swamy, a known adversary of Vajpayee, “who is even reported to have masterminded the downfall of the Vajpayee government in 1998”, has been given a prominent place in the BJP, it said.

“The BJP might forget Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee. But every Indian must ponder over the questions he raised on the man who is now the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate,” the article added.

BJP spokesperson Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said the episode only showed that the Congress was confused in its approach to the BJP.

“This is the same Congress who used to say Vajpayeeji is good but not BJP. Now they are saying BJP is good but not Narendra Modi. The Congress party is confused,” he said.

Another BJP leader Nirmala Sitharaman said, “Vajpayee has also spoken about ‘Rajdharma’ which Narendra Modi is clearly following in the state of Gujarat. Congress has become so desperate that they are turning to our leaders with the hope of gaining more votes. They have lost their will to fight.” 


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