Sonia maintains distance from Ramlila eviction

SP, Mayawati criticise; diplomatic silence, despite past Ramdev favours, from Mamata.

It was clear today that Congress president Sonia Gandhi wishes to keep her distance from the decision to vict Ramdev and his followers by force from their Ramlila Maidan agitation venue.

She was already known to be displeased at the sending of four ministers to meet Ramdev on his earlier arrival at the airport here, to plead with him to not proceed with the agitation.

Today, after a long meeting of the party at her residence, party general secretary Janardan Dwivedi pointedly sidestepped questions on whether the party endorsed last night’s police action.

“That has already been explained by the government,” was his reply to the repeated pressing on this issue. “We do not take note of individuals. The person mentioned is nothing (of no significance) and is supported by other forces.”

He preferred to go on at length on these “other forces” — “political and communcal forces, who after failing to get a popular mandate, try to spread rumours to promote themselves” — clearly, party shorthand for the BJP.

It was in 2006 that Ramdev, widely known for providing yoga and pranayam as an inexpensive way of finding internal balance and health, was made known to many who did not know him through an unlikely emissary: CPI (M) politburo member Brinda Karat, who charged him with mixing animal and human remains in his medicines. Karat based her charge on the testimony of those who worked in Ramdev’s pharmacy.

Now, six years later, it is the remarks of Congress leaders, including Kapil Sibal and Digvijay Singh which has had the same effect, of turning friends into enemies.

Sibal said Ramdev had not kept his word of holding a yoga class and had turned the meeting into a political gathering. He said the Ramlila Maidan was booked for 5,000 people and 50,000 turned up. In the circumstances, anything could have happened.

SP, BSP rap
But some of the Congress’s allies just laughed at these claims. “How can you say we will allow 5,000 but the 5,001st person will be turned away? This is not a ticketed event,” said a Samajwadi Party functionary. Samajwadi Party’s 22 MPs have all given letters of support to the UPA.

What irked the SP was the language used by Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh for Ramdev. Calling him a “fraud”, Singh also demanded an inquiry into the “thousands of crores of rupees” of property owned by Ramdev and an inquiry into the income tax exemption granted to the yoga guru’s medicines business. As Ramdev is a Yadav by caste, albeit from Haryana, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s supporters interpreted this also as a casteist attack.

Another party which has given letters of support to the UPA government to the President but criticised the police action was the Bahujan Samaj Party, which rules Uttar Pradesh. UP chief minister Mayawati, while addressing a convention of party workers in Karnataka, said in Bangalore that the crackdown at Ramlila Maidan was “inhuman”, “undemocratic”.

“Our party condemns this in the strongest terms,” she said.

Interestingly, Mayawati had asked local police to intervene in precisely the same manner in Bhatta-Parsaul in Greater Noida when Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi had visited the village surreptiously to console families of farmers who had been lathicharged when protesting against land acquisition.

However, the government’s most important ally, Trinamool Congress’s Mamata Banerjee, did not react at all to the events, though Ramdev had lent a helping hand during her election campaign.