NEW DELHI, 29 April 2004 — Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee hit out at opposition parties yesterday for being more interested in coming to power than providing good governance, and sought a mandate for stability.
He said opposition leaders have already begun staking claims to the prime minister’s post. “There is no dearth of PMs, but the need is for working together as a team.
“It is not a question of forming a government... but to give the nation political stability,” Vajpayee said at an election rally in an apparent reference to exit polls that forecast a hung parliament.
He urged the people to make a judicious choice, claiming that he had succeeded in providing a stable non-Congress alternative government that ran its full course at the Center. “You need a vision to make India a developed country. Today that dream is about to come true,” he said.
Dharmendra Wins Suit
A court in Indore has dismissed a complaint filed by two Madhya Pradesh Congress leaders against Dharmendra, a top Bollywood actor and BJP candidate from Bikaner, Rajasthan, citing “lack of evidence.”
Two Madhya Pradesh Congress leaders -Akthar Baig and K. K. Mishra - had filed the complaint on the issue of Dharmendra filing incorrect information in his nomination papers about his second marriage with actress Hema Malini by embracing Islam without divorcing his first wife as per the Hindu Marriage Act.
The complaint was, however, dismissed by the court of Judicial Magistrate Narendra Jain on the ground that copies of his nomination papers were not provided in support of the complaint. The Congress leaders’ lawyer Shailendra Dwivedi said that the court had not commented on the ‘Nikahnama’ and added that he would be filing a revision petition shortly. As per the “Nikahnama” Dharmendra’s marriage with Hema Malini was conducted in the Muslim tradition on Aug. 21, 1979. The amount of ‘Mehar’ was fixed as Rs. 1,11,000.
