No Assurance Given To Khurana, Says Advani

BJP president L K Advani today said the party did not assure Madan Lal Khurana of reinstating him as chief minister of Delhi.

The problem arising out of Khuranas resignation from BJPs vice-presidentship would be sorted out soon, he told a news conference here. Khurana resigned from his post on Friday protesting against his humiliation over BJP leaderships decision to retain Sahib Singh Verma as chief minister of Delhi.

Replying to a question, Advani said Kalyan Singh would take over as Uttar Pradesh chief minister when Mayawati steps down after six months as per the power-sharing agreement between the BJP and the BSP. He said the switch-over would be smooth.

Asked how his party could support the Haryana chief minister, Bansi Lal, who was known to be very close to the Late Indira Gandhi during emergency days, he said Bansi Lal was not responsible for the imposition of emergency. On press reports regarding the meeting of central BJP leaders with a Rajya Sabha Congress MP from Gujarat, Urmilaben Patel, for toppling the Rashtriya Janata Party government led by Shankersinh Vaghela, the BJP president said MPs of different parties often meet and added his party had no such move in mind.

Advani demanded mid-term polls at the centre and in Gujarat where, he said, the Congress was propping up useless governments from outside.

Advani told a press conference here, The cost of not holding elections was sometimes much more than holding them. As of now, corruption highlighted by the fodder scam in Bihar will be the main issue if elections were held today, as the Bofors issue was before the 1989 elections, he said.

People had seen how Congress president Sitaram Kesri and Prime Minister I K Gujral had shielded former Bihar chief minister Laloo Prasad Yadav from any harm, Advani said adding that the issue would be as decisive as the Bofors issue. He alleged that the sudden spurt in the Congress activities at the recent Calcutta AICC session was nothing but an attempt to revive the family rule in the country once again.

People have realised by now that family rules do grave harm to the democratic system in the country, he added.

Advani said Kesri, by criticising the coalition government at the Centre, had virtually given a notice to the Gujral government for withdrawal of his partys support to it.

But the Congress will not dare face the electorate immediately because the party leaders know it well that they have lost the peoples support. In Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, two big states, the Congress has almost been wiped out, he said.

Advani said his party would not indulge in manoeuvring for the removal of governments at the centre and in states like Gujarat, where the governments had become unstable with the Congress threatening to withdraw support every now and then.

During the Deve Gowda government, the CPI-M leader Harkishan Singh Surjeet was calling the shots, and now Kesri has been remote controlling the Gujral government for the past four months, he said.