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RSS forces Vajpayee to change tack on Modi issue

Tara Shankar Sahay in New Delhi

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's resignation on Friday to the ongoing Bharatiya Janata Party national executive meet in Goa and the latter rejecting it is the result of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh triumphing over Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a top official of the Prime Minister's Office said.

"The prime minister was open to suggestions from BJP and other political quarters that given the continuing violence in Gujarat, Modi's replacement would not seem odd. However, the RSS leadership, especially former BJP president Kushabhau Thakre, put his foot down that Modi's replacement was unacceptable," the official told rediff.com.

He said ever since the crisis in Gujarat commenced, Thakre, Union Home Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani and Vajpayee met on six occasions at the latter's Race Course road residence to discuss it.

Each time Thakre turned down Vajpayee's suggestion about replacing Modi after which the prime minister abandoned the idea, the official said.

"Before the prime minister left for his tour (of Singapore and Cambodia), he veered around to the view that it was in his government's long-term interests not to cave in to the pressure tactics of either the ruling partners or the opposition parties to replace the Gujarat chief minister," he said.

He said that Thakre, the most influential among the RSS leaders, spread the word among the Sangh that Modi would have to be defended, even at the cost of the Vajpayee government.

That is why senior BJP leaders with RSS links like BJP chief K Jana Krishnamurthy, Jagdish Prasad Mathur, Arun Jaitley and Pramod Mahajan provided sufficient indications that Modi would not be removed.

In fact, responding to a media report that Prime Minister Vajpayee had decided to replace Modi, Mathur dismissed it as 'baloney' saying, "Log gup-shup chhaap dete hain, yeh theek nahin hai (people publish rumours, this is not correct)."

The PMO official indicated that the 'strategy' pertaining to Modi's handing over his resignation to the BJP national executive in Goa (and its subsequent rejection) had been finalised by Union Law Minister Arun Jaitley with the blessings of the RSS leadership.

"The Gujarat chief minister's handing over his resignation and the BJP national executive rejecting it was like 'heads-I-win-tails-you-lose' kind of situation for the RSS leaders," the official said.

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