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January 19, 1998

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Bofors papers will not be made public: Gujral



Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral on Monday asserted that his government would not fall prey to the Congress's ploy or the Bharatiya Janata Party's pressures to make the Bofors papers public. For, this would jeopardise the efforts to track down the secret accounts in the gun deal.

Obviously responding to the demands by both Sonia Gandhi and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the prime minister expressed confidence that the government would shortly get at the accounts where the pay-offs were stashed.

Gujral was addressing a mammoth public meeting in Hyderabad, to kickstart the United Front's election campaign. The three-hour long meeting was addressed by the top UF brass and several chief ministers.

The cases, Gujral continued, have reached a crucial stage in the Swiss courts and any premature disclosure would only help shield the culprits. Moreover, this would annoy the Swiss authorities who had handed over the papers 'purely for legal purposes'.

Gujral said the papers were with the government even during P V Narasimha Rao's regime, indicating the Congress was already in possession of facts. The Swiss authorities have also disclosed the names of the recipients. Now both the Congress and the BJP are raising the bogey of 'Bofors papers' for political ends, the prime minister said.

Slogan-shouting marred the proceedings when the prime minister addressed the meeting. Initially the employees of the state-owned Indian Drugs and Pharmaceutical Limited waved placards to draw his attention to the plight of their sick unit. At the closing stage, the crowd demanded that Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu address them.

Making a scathing attack on the Congress, the prime minister said his government did not fall because of corruption charges.

"Gone are the days when scams and scandals thrived in the Central government," he said, "The UF government has come out unscathed during its 18-month tenure."

Scandals, be it Bofors or urea, the PM went on, flourished during the Congress regime. The party even took a public stand denying tickets to its leaders involved in corruption charges.

Most leaders, who addressed the gathering, targeted the Congress for bringing about political instability. The all-out criticism of the party was apparently in the context of the UF partner, the Telugu Desam taking on the Congress in Andhra Pradesh.

In a frontal attack on the BJP, the prime minister described the party as only a mask of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh. While the BJP is talking in terms of reconciliation with the minorities, its controlling body (the RSS) was asserting that the liberation of Kashi and Mathura temples was their main agenda. Such double standards would only pose a threat to the unity and the integrity of the country.

Former prime minister H D Deve Gowda said the days of the single-party rule were over. The coalition era ushered in by the UF is here to stay, he said.

West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu emphasised the need to keep at bay both the Congress and the BJP.

"The CPI-M has already decided to participate in a UF government if it is voted to power," he said.

CPI-M general secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet said the Congress was disintegrating and that Sonia Gandhi would not be able to revive it.

UNI

RELATED REPORT:
BJP takes stock of Sonia effect on campaign

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