NEW DELHI, 24 April — Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s Hindu extremist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) suffered a setback yesterday when a motion to debate the unending riots in Gujarat was accepted in the Lok Sabha despite its opposition.
Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament) Deputy Speaker P.M. Sayeed rejected requests by the BJP, which leads India’s multiparty ruling coalition, not to allow a vote after a debate on the Gujarat situation as demanded by the opposition.
A voting in the 545-member lower house, which could divide the ruling coalition, would now take place April 30.
The move came as seven more people were killed in the state in clashes between Hindus and Muslims.
Hindu mobs burned down homes of Muslims in the Shahibagh area of Ahmedabad and a dozen shops belonging to Hindus were set on fire by a group of Muslims, police said.
A mob of about 2,000 people encircled the state Police Commissioner P.C. Pande’s office shouting slogans against the police late yesterday evening, but the crowd was dispersed, a police spokesman said.
In the Saraspur area of Gujarat’s commercial capital Ahmedabad, a mosque was damaged when rioters set fire to nearby huts, police said.
A police officer said large-scale arson and stone-pelting incidents had also been reported from the old quarter of Ahmedabad, where Hindus and Muslims live close together.
Parliament session was adjourned in uproar over the Gujarat issue on Monday, as it was every day last week, with no business conducted.
The opposition has been demanding a debate followed by a vote. The government has expressed willingness to discuss Gujarat, but not in a formal debate that would involve a vote.
“Since I was unable to evolve a consensus after my meeting with leaders of political parties, I will give my ruling which will have to be upheld by all parties,” said Deputy Speaker P.M. Sayeed, who is a member of Sonia Gandhi’s opposition Congress party.
“Since the situation in Gujarat touches the lives of every Indian, the debate in Parliament over Gujarat will take place under parliamentary rule 184 which includes a formal vote,” Sayeed said.
Some of the Hindu nationalist BJP party’s coalition partners have hinted that they would support opposition calls for Gujarat’s Chief Minister Narendra Modi to be sacked over his handling of the crisis.
But there is no immediate threat of the BJP-led 20-party coalition falling.
The BJP, which rules in New Delhi and Gujarat, has taken heavy flak from opposition parties for the violence in the state and for its refusal to sack Modi.
BJP spokesman V.K. Malhotra told reporters that his party would abide by the deputy speaker’s decision.
Sayeed said “the gravity of the ground situation” in Gujarat was “self-evident from the fact that (the) army has been called in to aid civil authorities.”
“The army deployment continues ... In the circumstances, the Gujarat situation cannot be construed as an ordinary law and order problem which concerns only the state government.”
On Monday, Sayeed chaired an all-party meeting attended by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Sonia to break the deadlock. But the discussions failed, with the opposition refusing to drop its demand that a censure motion be presented on the violence.
