NEW DELHI, 1 November 2007 — Top Indian ministers yesterday launched a drive for the arrest of Gujarat’s state leader on murder charges after a TV sting linked his supporters to the bloody 2002 riots.
Railways Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav went to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s office and demanded the “immediate arrest” of Chief Minister Narendra Modi, officials said.
Several Cabinet members accompanied Lalu to Manmohan’s office, where they said the sting operation carried out by the Tehelka media group and broadcast by private Aaj Tak TV network proved Modi’s hand in the carnage.
“The Tehelka tapes are sufficient evidence to book Modi under section 302 (first-degree murder) and place him and the other perpetrators of the communal carnage under arrest,” the delegation told Manmohan. Lalu later told reporters the prime minister “promised to look into the matter.”
In another development, the prime minister yesterday told a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) delegation that Karnataka Governor Rameshwar Thakur be given reasonable time to decide on their claim to form government along with the Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S). “The prime minister suggested that the governor be given reasonable time. But we told him that four days have passed since we handed over the letter (to form a) government headed by B.S. Yeddiyurappa,” BJP Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu told reporters after a 30-minute meeting with Manmohan Singh.
The BJP delegation also drew the prime minister’s attention to a Supreme Court observation concerning dissolution of Bihar Assembly earlier that shifting stands of political parties cannot be the ground for the dissolution of the assembly.
While the BJP team led by L.K. Advani and party chief Rajnath Singh met the prime minister, the party and its estranged ally JD-S held rallies in Bangalore and other places in the state protesting the delay in inviting the combine to form the government.
Thakur has not shown any hurry to decide on their claim and is yet to send a report on the situation in the state to the president. “I will send it in a day or two,” he told Yeddiyurappa on Tuesday.
While Thakur decides on the claim by the two estranged partners, the Congress has also kept up pressure on him to dissolve the assembly, which still has 20 months left.
