No Plan To Review Sankhya Vahini
Despite pressure from the Sangh Parivar, the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government has no plans to review the controversial Sankhya Vahini project, according to a government note circulated to BJP members of Parliament yesterday.
The note, prepared by the government but circulated by the party, asserted that the decision to set-up the project was in the national interest. The 29-page note has tried to give a point by point rebuttal to the charges levelled by fomer Delhi Chief Minister Madan Lal Khurana and some senior Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh leaders against the government on the issue.
Khurana who had raised the issue but retracted after meeting Prime Minister Vajpayee came to the parliamentary party meeting after it was over. The BJP asserted that the Khurana chapter was over. However, the managers of the party and the government cirulated the note to dispel doubts about the project.
Vajpayee expressed displeasure over the Khurana episode saying that party MPs should raise issues in the party forum and not go public. He said his government believed in transparency and was willing to discuss any issue, party spokesperson M Venkaiah Naidu said.
The government was embarrassed by the leakage of Khurana's letter to Prime Minister in which he had raised the issues of Sankhya Vahini, PDS price increase and removal of quantitative restrictions on imports. He had alleged that the QR restrcitions were being removed at the US behest.
The government did not respond to the other issues raised by Khurana presumably as its mangers were confident of their arguments, a BJP leader said. The Sankhya Vahini had become controversial as some RSS leaders too had concluded that this could be security risk.
The Sankhya Vahini project would concentrate on implementing a high-speed data network for the first time in India, the note said. With the deregulation of the Internet Service Provider industry in India and the likely entry of private and public players into the business of setting up their independent backbone infrastructures, building a network such as Sankhya Vahini would give DTS a head start to remain a market leader for a long time, the government has justified.
The note brushed aside the allegation that it was done under secret and mysterious circumstances amounting to selling of natonal interests. The project was evolved after wide ranging discussions and consultations with officials, academicians, scientists and a cross section of other opinions, it said. The project details were put on the Internet for wider dissemination and transparency, it pointed out.
It pointed out that the Carnegie Mellon University, USA, which is to implement the high speed date network in India in collaboration with the DoT, is a private educational institution renowed world wide for its contribution to computer sciences, robotics, material sciences and other fields of high technology.
It also refuted other charges that the VSNL would become a dead organisation after setting up of Sankhya Vahini or that the control of the Vahini would be in the US hands.