NEW DELHI, 20 August 2005 — In a day of fast-paced events, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) yesterday suspended veteran politician Madan Lal Khurana for indiscipline, hours after he sought Gujarat Chief Minster Narendra Modi’s resignation and asked party President L.K. Advani to apologize for the 2002 communal violence in Gujarat.
Stung by Khurana’s suggestion that he follow the example of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s apology for the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, Advani wasted little time and took quick action to punish the former Rajasthan governor.
Besides suspension, the party also issued him a show cause notice demanding an explanation for his anti-party statements within 15 days, failing which he would be expelled.
A veteran BJP leader from Delhi, Khurana has been on the offensive since he wrote to Advani last month asking him to quit as BJP president as well as leader of opposition for deviating from the Hindutva ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
Advani’s row with the RSS — BJP’s ideological mentor — over his remarks praising Pakistan founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah gave Khurana an outlet to vent his anger and resentment. The former Delhi chief minister had been feeling slighted for a long time, ever since he was denied either a key role in the party or a place in the Rajya Sabha.
BJP sources said the action would underscore the fact that indiscipline of any sort would not be tolerated anymore.
Khurana had earlier yesterday squarely blamed the party’s Narendra Modi government in Gujarat for the largely anti-Muslim sectarian bloodshed in 2002 while asserting that the Congress had redeemed itself for its role in inciting the 1984 anti-Sikh violence with Manmohan Singh’s apology to the nation. In a letter to Advani, Khurana urged him to do the right thing by apologizing for the Gujarat violence — which the state’s BJP government was widely accused of abetting — and removing Modi as chief minister.
“The prime minister apologized to the nation and erased the blot on Congress’ record...similarly the BJP’s national president should apologize for the Gujarat violence and ask for Modi’s resignation,” Khurana said.
“It is not only I — even the Supreme Court judge has described Modi as Nero for his inability to check (the Gujarat reprisal killings triggered by the burning of 59 Hindu train passengers in Godhra town). A BJP MP in Rajya Sabha also said the violence should have been controlled if action had been taken in four or five hours.” Justifying his call for Modi’s resignation, he pointed out that union minister Jagdish Tytler also had to quit after he was named in the Nanavati panel report as one of the instigators of the mob attacks on Sikhs after Indira Gandhi’s assassination on Oct. 31, 1984.
Khurana, who had become an embarrassment for the BJP with his relentless campaign against Advani, made these remarks a day after he reportedly complained to former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee about Advani’s leadership and the anger in Gujarat BJP against Modi. He said there were “many” in the party who wanted Modi to go.
Khurana’s second letter to Advani promises to cause as much of a flutter as his first letter last month, in which he asked the BJP chief to quit his party post as well as that of leader of opposition in Lok Sabha, accusing him of abandoning the Hindutva ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
Two days ago, Khurana had said after a meeting with Gujarat dissidents: “Making Modi chief minister of Gujarat under pressure from Advani was the biggest mistake of my life. Had Keshubhai Patel (Modi’s predecessor) been chief minister of Gujarat, then Atal Behari Vajpayee would have been prime minister today.”
— With input from Indo-Asian News Service
