Why was Khurana suspended?

Amitabh Shukla

New Delhi, August 20

The latest letter written by former Delhi CM and Rajasthan Governor Madan Lal Khurana demanding the removal of Narendra Modi as Gujarat chief minister has turned out to be his nemesis leading to his suspension from the party.

Khurana had sent the letter to BJP president L.K. Advani on Thursday. However, he made the letter public on Saturday demanding Modi’s removal to clear the “tainted image” of the party from the Gujarat riots.

Khurana, who has also been demanding the removal of L.K. Advani as the BJP president following his Pakistan visit, said that the Congress had done a “penance” with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh apologising to the nation on the 1984 riots. “The BJP needs to follow suit and the removal of Modi is the only way out,” he wrote in the letter.

Severely berating the party for the Gujarat riots, Khurana wrote in the letter that the main reason for the defeat of the BJP in the last Lok Sabha polls was the riots in that state. “Any chief minister can control riots in 4-8 hours but instead of controlling it, Modi inflamed it further,” the letter said.

It was not only Modi who bore the brunt of the anger of the angry old man of BJP in Delhi. The six-year rule of the NDA under the prime ministership of Atal Behari Vajpayee too was targeted by Khurana. “In our six years of rule, we not only failed to provide justice to the victims of the 1984 riots but also failed to rehabilitate them,” he said. Khurana said that even for the Kashmiri pandits, who had become refugees in their own country, the NDA failed to do anything.

The former Rajasthan Governor, who came to active politics in Delhi after resigning on the issue of closure of industries, was sympathetic to the Congress saying that it had absolved itself of the charges of involvement in the 1984 carnage by removing Union Minister Jagdish Tytler. “The Prime Minister has led by an example and removed the stains of the 1984 carnage from the party but the BJP is now in the dock,” he said.

Citing the Supreme Court orders, Khurana indicted Modi and said that the common people fail to understand why the BJP wants to keep him as the chief minister. (2005)