NEW DELHI/BHOPAL, 24 August 2004 — Uma Bharati, the fiery chief minister of India’s Madhya Pradesh state, resigned yesterday as she faced arrest for instigating Hindu-Muslim riots in southern Karnataka state 10 years ago.
Bharati submitted her resignation to Gov. Balram Jakhar yesterday afternoon in Bhopal after the parliamentary board of the Bharatiya Janata Party gave her the go-ahead. Bharati handed in her resignation to BJP chief M. Venkaiah Naidu on Saturday in the wake of a non-bailable warrant against her for a 1994 riot in Hubli in Karnataka in which six people were killed after she unfurled the national flag in a prohibited area.
The BJP chose state Home Minister Babulal Gaur as her successor. He was sworn in later in the day.
The party criticized the Congress party-led government of Karnataka for reopening the case against Bharati. Naidu said the attempt to arrest her was a political move to create “an unparalleled situation of arresting a chief minister.”
The party decided Bharati should surrender to the court which had given the directive for her arrest last Tuesday.
Heated exchanges about the case between the treasury and opposition benches led to the adjournment of Parliament for a day at noon yesterday. The BJP is the main opposition party, while Congress heads India’s ruling United Progressive Alliance.
In the Lok Sabha (lower house), BJP members accused Congress President Sonia Gandhi of directing Karnataka’s Congress government to reopen the case. The previous Congress regimes had petitioned for withdrawal of the case against Bharati. The Rajya Sabha (upper house) also witnessed similar scenes.
Amid the bedlam, however, Railway Minister Lalu Prasad had his way as the railway budget was passed in less than five minutes without any discussion. He also got the requisite appropriation bills approved by a voice vote.
The 42-year-old Bharati is a fiery orator adept at rousing crowds and has often made headlines for her controversial statements. An ardent supporter of the BJP’s Hindu fundamentalist ideology, she banned meat and drinks from four cities with Hindu shrines and gave special status to the cow, holy among Hindus, in Madhya Pradesh after taking over as chief minister in December 2003.
A former federal government minister, Bharati is also fighting a court battle against charges of inciting a mob of Hindu fanatics that pulled down the 16th century Babri Mosque in the northern city of Ayodhya in 1992.
Bharati’s successor, Gaur, is a veteran BJP leader and eight-time legislator. Bharati strongly refused BJP’s proposal to appoint five-time MP and BJP General Secretary Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Insisting that the chief minister should be selected from among party MLAs, Bharati then proposed Gaur’s name, which was accepted by the BJP.
The long arm of the law has not spared yet another dominating figure in state politics — Chief Minister Jayaram Jayalalitha of Tamil Nadu. The Supreme Court directed the Tamil Nadu government yesterday to transfer within a week records of two cases of disproportionate assets against Jayalalitha to a Bangalore court, where the trial was earlier shifted.
