NEW DELHI: The Congress dissidents have charged that being seem as not supporting the impeachment motion against Justice Ramaswamy, Prime Minister Narasimha Rao made even a bigger blunder than the one over the Ayodhya crisis which Iced to the Babri demolition on December 6.
Addressing a press conference here recently, K.N.Singh, Natwar Singh and Sheila Dikshit all suspended from the active membership of the party said that the enormity of the mistake of abstaining from voting on the impeachment motion was greater than that in assessing the Ayodhya situation. They said that the Congress which had given an issue to the Opposition by not voting for the motion would have to pay a price for this blunder.
We are deeply distressed at the manner in which the vital question of voting on the motion to impeach Justice Ramaswamy was handled,” they said. The three former Union ministers accused the Prime Minister, “It is quite obvious that indecisiveness and vacillation led to a situation where our members in the Lok Sabha, due to no fault of theirs, fell between two stools and the party got the worst of all possible worlds.” They regretted that “on an issue which has such profound moral, legal and political ramifications. Our party was seen to have no view.”
The dissidents who are stepping up their activity again, are going to issue their own “white paper’ on Ayodhya which they are planning to send to all the AICC members, MPs and important party functionaries in the states. The dissidents’ white paper will seek to pinpoint where and how the Government went wrong on the Ayodhya situation.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Vijayabhaskar Reddy is unhappy ‘Over the decision of the Congress Header ship to abstain from voting on the impeachment motion against Supreme Court judge V. Ramaswamy.
“It was mistake on our part and we may be dubbed as a party that is trying to shield a corrupt judge,” Vijayabhaskar Reddy said.
Asked for his reaction on the impeachment move falling through, he said that directing members of the Lok Sabha to vote according to their conscience was acceptable, but it was “not proper’ for the party leadership to ask its members 1o abstain.
The decision to abstain may not be wholly the responsibility of Prime Minister P.V.Narasimha Rao, “He may have been misled by those around him,” Vijayabhaskar Reddy felt.
He recalled that he had some 20 months ago, while addressing a meeting of the Andhra Pradesh Congress I Committee’s legal cell in Hyderabad, demanded the resignation of Ramaswamy.
He had even written at that time to the Chief Justice of India not to allocate work to Ramaswamy till he was absolved of the charges.
Article extracted from this publication >> May 21, 1993
