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Swamy tells PM to desist from praising RSS

Janata Party president Dr Subramanian Swamy on Sunday criticised Prime Minister A B Vajpayee for defending the Rashtriya Swayamsevek Sangh, and urged him and his Cabinet colleagues to desist from praising the organisation.

Talking to newsmen in Madras, he said Vajpayee's defence of the RSS would only imply that the government had a "hidden agenda". Moreover, it would also erode the authority of the prime minister's office.

If the prime minister, who heads a coalition government, praises the RSS, then others in the front have the right to criticise it for its negative role in the 1942 Quit India movement, the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, subversion of the anti-Emergency struggle and the demolition of the Babri Masjid, he said.

Referring to the reported remarks of RSS general secretary H V Seshadri that the organisation would seek to remote-control the Vajpayee government, Dr Swamy said the RSS could not run a parallel government, and this was not acceptable.

Falling in line with some of the Union ministers and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam general secretary J Jayalalitha, Dr Swamy demanded the immediate dismissal of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government in Tamil Nadu. It was the "patriotic" duty of the Vajpayee government to invoke Article 356 of the Constitution against the state government, he added.

Dr Swamy said Vajpayee did not seem to have understood the gravity of the situation in Tamil Nadu, wherein Chief Minister M Karunanidhi had allegedly abetted "the ISI-Al Umma nexus". Bland generalities like Article 356 would not be misused were no substitute for the ground reality, he added.

He alleged that the 'Q' branch of the state police refused to co-operate with Military Intelligence in locating petrol bunks and warehouses which were used for smuggling diesel, petrol and medicines to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam militants in Sri Lanka.

On the reports that the Jain Commission, in its final report, had absolved the DMK, Dr Swamy wondered how Justice Jain could do a somersault between November, when he had submitted his interim report, indicting the DMK for abetting the LTTE militants, and March when he presented the final report, he asked.

He demanded that the report be handed over to a sitting Supreme Court judge for action to be taken on the basis of the report after it was made public.

He also urged the prime minister to act on the memorandum, submitted to him by Jayalalitha on restoration of the Tamil Nadu Mercantile Bank to the Nadar community.

UNI

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