HYDERABAD, 13 April — Pressure from within his party forced Telugu Desam Party (TDP) president and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu to demand Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s removal.
Sources in the TDP yesterday said most of the party’s leadership strongly disapproved of Modi’s continuance in power, as he is widely seen to have been anti-Muslim in handling the sectarian violence that has rocked Gujarat. TDP leaders forced Naidu at a meet here Thursday saying that the Modi government’s culpability in the violence, in which over 900 people, mostly Muslims, have been killed since February-end, had damaged TDP’s credibility.
With 28 MPs in the Lok Sabha, the TDP is the biggest group propping Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s multiparty coalition in New Delhi. As Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has backed Modi against charges that he was blatantly pro-Hindu, Naidu’s colleagues believe the adverse publicity would rub off on the TDP, eroding its base with the Muslims and liberals.
As a result, Naidu did a turnaround Thursday and authorized a statement from the TDP politburo demanding that the BJP replace Modi as Gujarat chief minister.
“The TDP demands the BJP to immediately effect a change of leadership in Gujarat,” the politburo statement said. “Unless this is done, we will be guilty of eroding public confidence and failing to provide just and fair governance.”
It noted that recent developments in Gujarat were a matter of grave concern, and tarnished India’s image of being a liberal, modern and secular society, and the sustained communal violence threatened to undo the country’s secular fabric.
Just a day earlier, Naidu had brushed aside the demand by the opposition and even some of Vajpayee’s other allies for Modi’s removal. The Andhra Pradesh chief minister had then said sacking Modi would not solve Gujarat’s problems.
But at the politburo meeting, top leaders like the state’s Home Minister T. Devender Goud and party General Secretary Lal Jan Basha told Naidu to send a stern message to the BJP or the party’s secular image would be tarnished. These leaders reportedly told Naidu that by siding with the BJP on the issue of Modi’s removal, the TDP could alienate the minorities.
Sources said TDP had been upset since mid-March when Vajpayee appeared soft on the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a BJP affiliate, which was threatening to hold rituals near a razed 16th-century mosque at Ayodhya despite a court ban. Party leaders Thursday reminded Naidu that the TDP had supported Vajpayee’s coalition in 1998 only after the BJP promised not to push its pro-Hindu agenda that was anathema to the liberal and secular elements in his coalition.
