NEWSLINKS US EDITION SOUTH ASIA COLUMNISTS DIARY SPECIALS INTERVIEWS CAPITAL BUZZ REDIFF POLL DEAR REDIFF THE STATES ELECTIONS ARCHIVES US ARCHIVES SEARCH REDIFF
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday condemned the Congress-led Rajasthan government for the starvation deaths in the state.
Party spokesman Arun Jaitley, while referring to an observation made by the Supreme Court on Tuesday in this context, said, "This is particularly serious... The Rajasthan government failed to lift more than 65 per cent of its allotted food grains."
According to Jaitley, the apex court had said Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot had no business to ask for more food grains when the state had failed to lift the quota allotted by the Centre.
He said the BJP's three-member fact-finding team on the starvation deaths, comprising Gopinath Munde, Ramdas Agarwal and Jaspal Meena, will release its preliminary report in Rajasthan on Wednesday. The final report would be submitted to party president Venkaiah Naidu within a week, he added.
Meanwhile, another party spokesman, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, said, "The Rajasthan government and state Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot were responsible for the complete failure of the Public Distribution System that resulted in infliction of such misery on the poor people."
He said the fact-finding team had come to the conclusion that the state government had grossly understated the toll, which stood at 51.
"The state government cannot complain of inadequacy of allocation of food grains," asserted Naqvi. "For the year 2002-03, the state has been allocated under the Sampoorn Grameen Rozgar Yojna and the special component of the Yojna, 1.31 lakh tonnes and 2 lakh tonnes of food grains. As on October 17, the state has lifted a total of 1.14 lakh tonnes, which is even less than 35 per cent of the total allocation."
This "conclusively establishes the incompetence of the state in dealing with the PDS and the problem of starvation among the poor people", he said.
"It is, therefore, not without reason that the Supreme Court has told the counsel for the Rajasthan government that your chief minister has no business to ask for more food grains, when what was allocated by the Centre was not lifted," he said.
Meanwhile, dismissing the interpretation, of the apex court's observation, Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi said, "There were no such observations made by the Supreme Court. The bench wanted some clarifications, to which it was informed that the food grains were under the process of being lifted and the remaining amount would be lifted by November 15."
He also dismissed the BJP's claim that the Rajasthan government had failed to lift its quota. He said two-thirds of the total allocation had been lifted while the remaining amount would be lifted by mid November.
Back to top
Tell us what you think of this report
