Chennai, Jan 17: BJP president Kushabhau Thakre today described as `absolutely false' reports that there were moves to replace Atal Behari Vajpayee with L K Advani as the Prime Minister of the country.`Vajpayee is the leader of the Government from the beginning and he will be there,' Thakre said in an informal chat with reporters at the Meenambakkam airport tonight when he arrived from Mumbai en route to Vijayawada.Such reports were `absolutely false and there is no truth in them'.Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh had recently told newsmen here that there were moves in the BJP to replace Vajpayee with Advani. To a question on developments in Gujarat, he said some `small incidents' had been blow out of proportion and there was an `international conspiracy to destabilise the country'.Asked to comment on the performance of the Vajpayee Government as the Prime Minister himself had said that he was `reviewing' it, Thakre said the Vajpayee Government was a very good government and it had done agood job despite some constraints.Replying to a question whether these constraints posed by the allies of the BJP were the reason for the postponement of the Cabinet expansion, the BJP chief said in a coalition government `democratic pressures' were natural. Even a single party government encountered such pressures but the Government had to face them.However, even though he did not have the details, he expressed confidence that the expansion would take place soon.On the charge that a `bogey' was being created by the BJP that the violence against minorities in Gujarat was the result of conversions, Thakre said there were some incidents in Gujarat. `They are unfortunate'. However, he felt that an one-sided picture had been given as even places of worship of a particular religion had been destroyed. `We consider such incidents as bad and Gujarat Government took steps to contain them', he said.
