Vaiko: Govt to eat its words in SC

It couldn’t have come at a more inopportune moment! Barely a day after he was partying with his allies over completion of five years in...

It couldn’t have come at a more inopportune moment! Barely a day after he was partying with his allies over completion of five years in office, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was today faced with the task of saving his 24-party coalition, threatened by a faux pas in a Central Government affidavit supporting the invocation of POTA against detained MDMK leader Vaiko in Supreme Court.

However, he did some quick fire-fighting and reassured his Tamil Nadu allies, MDMK and DMK, that the Centre would soon make amends. Accordingly, BJP president M Venkaiah Naidu announced after a seven-hour meeting of the NDA co-ordination committee that ‘‘the Government will make its stand clear in the apex court tomorrow.’’ He said Law Minister Arun Jaitley told NDA leaders that what had appeared in the media today was not the Government’s stand. He said while POTA was necessary for the country, in the case of Vaiko, it was ‘‘a misapplication’’.

The Vaiko issue was raised by DMK leader and Union minister T R Baalu. Back home in Chennai, a DMK release said: ‘‘The matter was discussed by Baalu with Vajpayee, Advani and Jaitley.’’ The Law Minister, according to the release, told him that the affidavit was filed because of a ‘‘mistake’’ which was being ‘‘corrected’’. The affidavit was ‘‘contrary to the Central Government’s stand on this issue,’’ the release said. Jaitley clarified Vaiko’s speech ‘‘will not attract provisions of POTA’’, it said.

The MDMK, however, chose to keep its fingers crossed. Party treasurer and Union minister M Kannappan stated that ‘‘only when the case comes up for hearing in the court, a clear picture of the stand of the Central Government conveyed in their affidavit will be known from their arguments.’’ The MDMK, he said, would decide its course of action only after that. Sources disclosed that Attorney General Soli Sorabjee had been instructed by the Government to file a fresh affidavit. Official sources held Sorabjee’s juniors responsible for the faux pas.

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At the meeting, the leaders also discussed their strategy for the next Lok Sabha as well as the coming assembly polls. Those who attended the meeting included Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani, NDA convenor and Samata Party chief George Fernandes, his party colleague Railways Minister Nitish Kumar, Shiv Sena leader Prakash Paranjape, Janata Dal-U president and Food Minister Sharad Yadav, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, INLD chief and Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala and Akali Dal chief Parkash Singh Badal. Given the vital nature of issues at hand, the BJP invited its senior ministers M M Joshi, Jaswant Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Ananth Kumar and Jaitley, chief ministers Narendra Modi and Arjun Munda, party president Naidu and general secretaries Pramod Mahajan and Rajnath Singh to the meeting.

Naidu said the leadership had held similar discussions with Andhra CM Chandrababu Naidu earlier. The parties left out of today’s exercise — MDMK, BJD, PMK, NC and RLD of Ajit Singh would be invited to the next round of discussions, he added.