PATNA, 18 March 2004 — Bihar strongman Laloo Prasad Yadav’s loyalists yesterday threatened to stop Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani’s campaign caravan from entering Bihar, saying it would stoke communal passions.
Advani is scheduled to enter Bihar on his Bharat Uday Yatra or India Shining campaign from Gopalganj district bordering Uttar Pradesh on April 7.
Leaders of Laloo’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in Muzaffarpur have threatened to “smash” the caravan in which Advani is traveling if it enters Bihar.
Laloo has already cautioned the Bihar government that the campaign could lead to communal trouble in the state.
He has asserted that there has been no communal tension in the state in the 14 years the RJD has been in power.
Bihar Law Minister Shakeel Ahmad Khan has urged the law enforcing agencies to keep a close watch on Advani’s march.
“We all know Advani’s tour of 1990 resulted in large-scale communal trouble, killing of hundreds of Muslims and demolition of Babri Mosque in December 1992,” Khan said.
Laloo, then the chief minister, had arrested Advani in 1990 as his “Rath Yatra” advocating the construction of a Ram temple at Ayodhya, entered Bihar.
The Supreme Court is to hear today a plea for stopping Advani’s campaign ahead of the April-May parliamentary elections.
The petition contends the speeches made by Advani during the campaign could inflame communal passions.
Meanwhile, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) yesterday said the Congress was “ideology-starved” and had needlessly raked up Advani’s past and questioned his role in the Indian freedom movement.
Stung by Congress remarks about Advani’s roots in Karachi in Pakistan (before the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan), Law Minister Arun Jaitley said the BJP would continue to make an issue out of Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s foreign birth.
“We are satisfied that such trivia is being raised and the campaign is touching a new low, as it proves our principal opponent Congress is ideology starved,” Jaitley said at a press conference.
Congress spokesperson Kapil Sibal had on Tuesday retaliated against BJP’s persistent criticism of Italy-born Sonia’s foreign origin, pointing out that much of Advani’s family and property was still in Karachi, where he was born.
Sibal had also quoted from a book to say that Advani’s family had owned a Victoria (horse-driven buggy) that he said was usually owned in those days by the British or families loyal to the British rulers.
Jaitley responded: “We are grateful to the Congress for raising this issue of foreign origin, because we will keep raising it too.
“What vehicle the Congress president had when she was abroad we do not know. Advani and his family did not own any car.”
Advani , currently in Hyderabad a part of his campaign tour, yesterday called upon Andhra Pradesh’s ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP) to join the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government.
Advani conveyed this when TDP President and Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu met him over breakfast.
“I would be very happy if the TDP joins the government but it is the for the TDP to decide.
“I did mention to Chandrababu Naidu that we would be very happy if your party joins,” Advani said at a news conference.
