NEW DELHI, 15 July 2003 — Railway Minister Nitish Kumar yesterday offered to resign due to differences within his party, which is holding a two-day national council meeting here yesterday However, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee rejected the resignation offer, an official said.
Kumar, under whose tenure there has been a spate of train accidents, offered to quit in a letter to the prime minister after a meeting of his Samata Party earlier in the day launched a broadside against him.
Defense Minister George Fernandes, who is also the Samata Party president, chaired the party meeting. Differences between the Kumar and Fernandes camps have been simmering for some time.
The Samata Party, a key ally of National Democratic Alliance, also opposed any such move to pave the way for the construction of a temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya, dashing the hopes of the Sangh Parivar.
Fernandes announced that he was not in favor of bringing such a legislation. However, he was not categorical when asked whether the party would oppose such a legislation in Parliament.
Fernandes said the party would decide when the government presents its view on this. A draft resolution moved earlier at the national executive meeting of the party here yesterday, cautioned the NDA government against the VHP demand of “enacting such laws through Parliament,” saying it will only result in creating further tensions and destroying the secular ethos, as was done by the Rajiv Gandhi government in the Shah Bano case where women’s rights were also undermined.”
The Samata Party held that “the Ayodhya dispute must be resolved through dialogue or by abiding by a verdict of the court.” The draft resolution felt “that a continuing dialogue between the moderates of both communities will resolve the issue, or at least create a climate in which the acceptance of the court verdict, whatever it may be.”
At the party’s meet today Fernandes is likely to be re-elected as the party president, and it would lead to a consolidation of the hold of Nitish Kumar on the party. Two members of the Lok Sabha, Raghunath Jha and Brahmanand Mandal, suspended from the party by Fernandes at the behest of Kumar earlier, are likely to be shown the door.
While, he BJP continued to measure its words with regard to the foreign origin of Sonia Gandhi, the Samata Party document launched a scathing attack on the Congress for choosing Sonia as its leader. With this action they (Congress) “are telling the world that only a foreign-born person of no political or administrative experience is capable of heading this great nation.”
The Samata described this as “the single biggest act of humiliation that could ever be heaped on a nation” and said that the Congress perhaps wished to “tell the nation that neither the party nor the country has anyone more capable than its foreign-born accidental leader.”
