The Hindu : Judev has quit but Jogi has not, says BJP

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Nov 18, 2003

National

National

Judev has quit but Jogi has not, says BJP

By Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI NOV. 17. A meeting at the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee's residence this morning reviewed the political fallout of the Judev affair on the Assembly elections and concluded that it would be best to brazen it out by occupying the moral high ground after getting the Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests, Dilip Singh Judev, to resign.

The Bharatiya Janata Party decided to divert attention away from the Judev episode and instead turned the heat on the Congress by demanding that the main Opposition party secure the resignation of the Chhattisgarh Chief Minister, Ajit Jogi, in the case of the alleged forgery of an Intelligence Bureau document.

Besides Mr. Vajpayee, those present at the hour-long meeting were the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, the BJP president, M. Venkaiah Naidu, the Finance Minister, Jaswant Singh, general secretary in-charge of elections, Pramod Mahajan, the Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Ravi Shankar Prasad, who is looking after the elections in Rajasthan, and the party chief whip in the Lok Sabha, V.K. Malhotra, in-charge of the election campaign in Delhi. The Law Minister, Arun Jaitley, who is in-charge of Madhya Pradesh elections, could not come as he was away in Bhopal.

The meeting discussed the party's strategy now that the election campaign will begin in earnest tomorrow. The developments and feedback from the States were placed before Mr. Vajpayee who had been out of the country in the last six days. Above all, most of the hour was spent discussing the fallout of the Judev affair.

The party's favourite for the post of Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh in the event of the BJP winning the election, Mr. Judev was "caught" on a video compact disc (VCD) allegedly accepting a bribe from a man, supposedly a representative of an Australian firm seeking mining rights in Chhattisgarh and Orissa. Today, the Prime Minister ordered a CBI inquiry into it and Mr. Judev's resignation was sought and accepted.

After the meeting, Mr. Naidu told reporters that Mr. Judev was "honest" and he had conveyed this to the Prime Minister. It was a "vilification campaign" and a "conspiracy". Yet Mr. Judev had resigned on moral grounds so that the incident did not become a poll issue. The party leaders had requested the Prime Minister to order an inquiry "so that the truth comes out".

The strategy evolved at the meeting seems to be that the BJP should now loudly demand the resignation of Mr. Jogi, and juxtapose Mr. Judev's "quick resignation" with Mr. Jogi "sticking to his chair despite a court framing charges against him".

Later, the party spokesperson, Prakash Javadekar, said: "Mr. Judev is not Mr. Jogi who even after being charged by a court (in the case related to his tribal status) and the Intelligence Bureau (of a fraud in connection with an IB document) still sticks to his chair. Mr. Judev has resigned, he is not Mr. Jogi."

Party sources indicated that till yesterday the leadership was in two minds on whether Mr. Judev should be asked to resign or carry on. Last evening after almost all the television channels played the VCDs and it became clear that most newspapers would carry the story (an expose by the Indian Express), it was decided that securing the resignation was necessary. It became clear that if the party wanted to occupy the moral high ground it was claiming to then the resignation of Mr. Judev was a must.

Having secured that, and after ordering a CBI inquiry into the affair, it was indicated that Mr. Judev would be used in the Chhattisgarh election campaign "at least for two days" to gauge the people's reaction.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

National