Two More Ministers May Quit In Gujarat

BJP general secretary Venkaiya Naidu said the president should pull up the governor as the later was playing a part in polluting the political atmosphere in the state.

Two ministers, Babubhai Moghji Shah and Khumansinh Vasaiya did not turn up at the meeting of the state cabinet yesterday. Chief minister Sauresh Mehta explained that Vasaiya could not attend the meeting because he was sick.

Shah, however, told a few reporters that he may be dropped from the ministry if he did not quit on his own. He belongs to the chief minister's home district of Kutch and the two were close till recently.

Talking to reporters in the presence of RSS strongman Govindacharya, Naidu said that the President should make sure that the Governor tried to tackle the situation in a constitutional manner.

Vajubhai Vala, state chief of the BJP, accused Sankarsinh Vaghela who formed the new party on Tuesday following his expulsion from the BJP, of using goons to kidnap and coerce party MLAs to join the new outfit.

He pointed out that three men with criminal records were present at Vaghela's public rally on Tuesday.

Vala and another BJP MLA, Haren Pandya, have filed a petition before the assembly speaker Harishchandra Patel seeking the disqualificat ion of the 10 MLAs who were seen at Vaghela's rally. Though they had been expelled from the party earlier, the BJP now wants them to be dismissed from the state assembly. Vala said that these leaders attracted the provisions of the anti-defection law because they had joined a party other than the one which enabled them with the elections.

Meanwhile, the state government has come up with a package of measures aimed at benefiting the weaker sections of society. It doubled the subsidy paid to farmers of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes for improving their lands from Rs 2,500 an hectre to Rs 5,000 an hectre.

The cabinet also decided to increase the upper limit for such subsidy from Rs 8,000 to Rs 16,000.

Significantly, the Vaghela camp, which formed the new party on Tuesday maintained a stoic silence yesterday with many of its leaders vanishing in thin air. Political circles felt that the rebels were engaged in clandestine efforts to overthrow the government by luring in more MLAs from the BJP without attracting the government's attention.

The government was also keeping a close watch on the movements of BJP legislators. They have been asked to remain in the official residence of different ministers and refrain from going out. The Chief Minister, however, denied that there was any move to restrict the movements of party legislators.