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Jaya's Delhi visit holds no threat, claims BJP

Bharatiya Janata Party general secretary Venkaiah Naidu Thursday said the party did not attach any political significance to All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam general secretary J Jayalalitha's four-day visit to New Delhi starting Friday.

Addressing the press in Madras, he said when the leader of a big party visits the capital, naturally there would be political implications attributed to it.

Asked about Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy's efforts to arrange a meeting between Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Jayalalitha, Naidu said both had been meeting regularly.

"She (Jayalalitha) is a seasoned and intelligent politician and the BJP would not come in her way," he quipped.

Alluding to the AIADMK leader's reference to Gandhi as a "foreigner", he said this was not the first time that Jayalalitha was making such remarks.

He said the recovery of arms, ammunitions and weapons from the jails where Muslim fundamentalists were lodged was proof of the grim law and order situation in Tamil Nadu.

The state government was not able to distinguish between terrorists and minorities, he told the media in Madras.

He also said that All India Jehad Committee president Kunakudi Hanifa, in a letter to Union Power Minister Rangarajan Kumaramangalam, had threatened the Centre of "dire consequences" if it acted against the state government.

Copies of the letter, purportedly written by Hanifa, and distributed to the press, also stated that his comrades would lay down their lives if the Centre moved against the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government.

Naidu alleged that it was only because of the government's failure to act against the fundamentalists that they were emboldened to make such threats.

The Congress, which had earlier opposed President's rule in Bihar, was now demanding that Chief Minister Rabri Devi step down on moral grounds in the wake of the recent massacre there, he said.

The Congress had only supported the Rabri Devi government with the intention of consolidating minority votes. The party, which had pronounced that it would not have any truck with the centrist forces, had acted on the contrary in Bihar, he charged.

Naidu claimed that all the BJP's coalition partners were solidly backing the government.

"Our stand on Bihar has proved it," he said, "Now the Congress is being blamed for the return of jungle raj in that state."

He demanded that the Congress clarify its stand on Bihar.

UNI

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