14
STYLE
OF FUNCTIONING
Mrs.
Chinnapillai, a 56 year old Dalit woman from the Tamil Nadu state, was
selected for the Sakthi Puraskar Award for the year 1999.
The award was for her contribution to rural women’s empowerment.
The government asked her to go to Delhi
to receive the award from Prime Minister
A.B. Vajpayee.
Accordingly, she went to Delhi.
As a mark of gratitude, she touched the
feet of the Prime Minister before receiving the award. He reciprocated it by
touching her feet.
The above act of the Prime Minister not
only moved the mind of Mrs. Chinnapillai but
also the people all over India.
On his 76th birth day, Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee gifted to
the nation the Pram Mantri Gram Sadak
Yojana and the Antoyodaya Anna
Yojana. The former scheme was to give road connectivity to one lakh
villages and the latter was to give food grains at Re. 2 per kg for wheat and
Re.3 per kg for rice for 50 million poor people.
Former
Prime Minister Mr. H. D. Deve Gowda immediately said that he had formulated
a scheme to give rice and wheat at subsidized prices to 36 crore people but
never clubbed it with his birth day.
The militant people attacked the
Parliament House on the 13th December 2001. All opposition parties extended
their full co-operation to the government. The Prime Minister, in turn,
remained in constant touch with the leaders of the opposition parties and
convened an all-party meeting on December 30, 2001.
It was followed by the meeting of former
prime ministers. All the predecessors of Prime Minister Vajpayee – Mr. V.P. Singh, Mr. Chandra Shekar, Mr. P.
V. Narasimha Rao, Mr. H.D. Deve Gowda and I.K. Gujral- attended the meeting. Former President Mr. R. Venkataraman also attended the meeting as a
special invitee.
Mr.
H. D. Deve Gowda and Mr. Chandra
Shekhar cautioned the government against beating the war drums - in the
pretext of the Parliament attack - a bit too loudly.
On 10 February 2002, Prime Minister Vajpayee said that there was a conspiracy to
disintegrate the country. A few days earlier he had said that an emergency like
situation was prevailing in India.
On 19 February 2002, while addressing an
election meeting, Prime Minister Vajpayee
said that the BJP would win the election to the Utter Pradesh State Assembly even without the help from the
Muslims. His statement was condemned by many political parties.
The
Samajwadi Party (SP) demanded the President of India to dismiss the Prime
Minister for his above statement. In a letter it wanted the Election Commission
of India (ECI) to consider the question of disenfranchisement of the Prime
Minister.
The Congress Party described the statement
as “highly objectionable but fought with dangerous consequences”.
The CPI (M) said that the statement
revealed his communal bias.
Former Prime Minister Mr. V. P. Singh said that his remarks were in “bad taste” and most
unbecoming of the Prime Minister.
The Union Government abolished the Banking
Service Recruitment Board in 2002.
A Parliamentary Committee on “Welfare of
the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes” wanted the government to provide
quota for these communities and women in the higher judiciary. The Committee
observed that out of about 490 High Court Judges, only about 20 were from the
SC/STs and only one Supreme Court judge belonged to the SC in 2002. The
Committee felt that the provision of Article 15(4) as interpreted by the Supreme
Court should be applied to the appointment of Supreme Court and High Court
judges without delay.
Quickly rejecting the demand, the
Government said that the appointment of judges to the High Courts and the
Supreme Court was governed by Article 124 and 217 of the Constitution of India
which do not provide for reservation. The government felt that the act of
amending the provisions of the Constitution to provide reservation would send
wrong signals to the judiciary.
Prime
Minister Vajpayee, after visiting the relief camps of the victims of the
Gugarat riot, admonished Mr. Narendra
Modi, Chief Minister of Gujarat and reminded him of his “Raj Dharma”.
Later, during an election rally in Goa, he
put the blame on Muslims.
This prompted a former Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court – Justice Ahmadi - to
say that the changing pattern of statements added insult to injury to the
Muslim Community. Addressing a national symposium on “Gujarat carnage &
media” at Bangalore on August 10, 2002, he said that he did not understand
which sermon he should take seriously from the Prime Minister of India.
On that day, Mr. H.D. Deve Gowda described the violence in Gujarat as state
sponsored terrorism.
