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Vajpayee blinks, sacks Buta

Rajesh Ramachandran in New Delhi

In a bid to pacify his Tamil ally J Jayalalitha, Prime Minister A B Vajpayee today sacked Communication Minister Buta Singh from the Union Cabinet.

The prime minister had asked Buta Singh to resign when the latter met Vajpayee on Sunday. With the minister refusing to oblige, the PM was left with no choice but to wield the axe.

The news of Buta Singh's sacking was announced to the media by the prime minister's political advisor, Pramod Mahajan.

The prime minister, Mahajan said, received a letter from AIADMK general secretary J Jayalalitha on April 18 demanding that those ministers involved in court cases should be asked to resign or be dropped. In this connection, she had mentioned the names of Buta Singh, Ramakrishna Hegde and Ram Jethmalani. Mahajan said the prime minister had sought Hegde and Jethmalani's comments on this. Hegde, the commerce minister, is abroad.

Singh was chargesheeted in the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha bribery case. Last week the Supreme Court refused to grant him immunity from prosecution.

Ever since Sedapatti R Muthiah, then surface transport minister, had to resign from the Cabinet after being chargesheeted in a corruption case, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam general secretary Jayalalitha has been demanding the ouster of all tainted ministers from the government.

"I am very happy to hear that Buta Singh has been dismissed. But it seems the government has taken a decision to drop only chargesheeted ministers. They have to draw a line," former Union law minister and the man actively campaigning for the ouster of tainted ministers from the Cabinet, Dr Subramanian Swamy, told Rediff On The NeT.

"To have probity in public life, they should not have ministers who are being investigated by their own government. Though there is no chargesheet against Jethmalani, there is an investigation going on against him," says Dr Swamy. "Home Minister L K Advani is also being investigated by a commission, so limiting the action to those charge-sheeted is not enough. Investigation by one's own government is not proper."

BJP leaders, on the contrary, feel they have bought peace with Jayalalitha. "Now that we have reached out and made a settlement, she should keep quiet for the time being," says a senior leader.

But the truce may not last long, given Jayalalitha's insistence on the dismissal of the Tamil Nadu government and the BJP's refusal to oblige her.

Even this temporary peace was bought only after the intervention of party emissaries. The BJP sent its senior vice-president in charge of Tamil Nadu, Jana Krishnamurthy, and later its master trouble-shooter, Rajasthan Chief Minister Bhairon Singh Shekhawat to Madras to intercede with Jayalalitha.

The three AIADMK ministers had kept their resignations ready and had been instructed to hand it in on Monday evening if no action was forthcoming from Vajpayee. Speculation was also rife about Dr Swamy's efforts to topple the government, especially following his meeting with Congress president Sonia Gandhi over the weekend.

"We have already made contact with other Tamil parties within the AIADMK coalition. So even if Jayalalitha walks out we would not worry much," says a BJP leader.

The party's calculation is that these allies will not abandon position and power and walk out with Jayalalitha into a thicket of political uncertainty.

"Even Jayalalitha has no alternative. With a vindictive state government she has much to lose if she pulls out of the coalition. As Sonia Gandhi is set on reviving the party, she would not risk taking in Jayalalitha, because the move will be opposed by the United Front," says a BJP national executive member.

The BJP is also worried over its allies taking pot-shots at each other. Jethmalani, who has been going hammer and tongs at Dr Swamy, is termed by party insiders as "a self-propelled missile capable of causing harm to the party" over whom the party has little control.

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