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External affairs over home affairs

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Posted: Mar 24, 2008 at 0005 hrs IST
L K Advani’s book has put on record what has been the subject of a lot of speculation: the internal debate within the BJP during the Gujarat riots of 2002 and more specifically then prime minister A B Vajpayee’s position on it. Advani’s book records that Vajpayee wanted Modi to resign but Advani resisted the suggestion. The entire conversation on the topic between Advani and Vajpayee happened during a plane journey from Delhi to Goa in April 2002. Jaswant Singh and Arun Shourie were also on the plane and all of them were travelling for the BJP national executive. “Modi should at least offer to resign,” Vajpayee said, according to Advani’s narration in the book. Advani recalls that he argued that a resignation would serve no purpose. However, there is a little more to the episode that Advani’s candid confessions have not recorded. Apparently, Vajpayee did not want to discuss the issue any further than his cryptic, semi-philosophical statement. His co-travellers tried to enagage Vajpayee in a detailed discussion on the subject but the patriarch seemed engrossed in a file on the conversations between Jaswant Singh and Christina Rocca, then US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia. Every time someone talked of Gujarat or Modi, Vajpayee would turn to Jaswant Singh with a remark on the file: “Aap bahut achha bole usko.”


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