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BJP defends 'trishul' distribution

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI APRIL 21. Bharatiya Janata Party leaders today expressed loud support for the `trishul deeksha' programme of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, with both the party president, Venkaiah Naidu, and the party spokesperson, Vijay Kumar Malhotra, asserting that the "trishuls'' (steel tridents) distributed by the VHP could not possibly hurt anyone.

As report came in from the State today that the VHP leader, Pravin Togadia, had got bail, the VHP leader, Giriraj Kishore, vowed to oust the Rajasthan Chief Minister, Ashok Gehlot, in the Assembly elections later this year even as he said that the organisation's `trishul' distribution programme would continue.

Mr. Naidu warned here that the Congress would have "to face the anger of Hindus'' and wondered how that party could describe "a patriot and a religious leader like Togadia as `deshdrohi' (anti-national)''.

Mr. Malhotra claimed that "ordinary table forks can be far more deadly'' than the "trishuls'' distributed by Mr. Togadia. The Rajasthan Government's order banning "trishuls" was described by Mr. Malhotra as a "bevakoofana (foolish) order ''.

The point that both Mr. Naidu and Mr. Malhotra made was that the Congress Governments were "not willing to use the Prevention of Terrorist Act (POTA) against those who have AK-47s'' but a Congress State Government had taken action to ban "trishuls", a "harmless Hindu symbol''.

On another issue, both the BJP leaders strongly criticised the West Bengal Government and the CPI (M) which, they said, had "in an unprecedented manner'' prevented the filing of nominations by 18,000 candidates, with the result that there were "10,000 unopposed candidates'' in the panchayat elections in the State.

The party also expressed the view that while it "did not agree with or approve of all the policies and actions of the Mayawati Government in Uttar Pradesh'', the fact was that several Congress State Government were also "pursuing'' political opponents. Mr. Malhotra pointed out that in Punjab the Chief Minister, Amrinder Singh, had publicly stated that he would put the Akali leader and former Chief Minister, Prakash Singh Badal, in jail. Then referring to the demand in Parliament that there should be a code for Chief Minister, he added: "We will welcome such a code, after all, it is the Opposition which is ruling in most of the States.''

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