Relations with Pakistan gain importance in Indian polls
By Jawed Naqvi
LUCKNOW, April 27: Relations with Pakistan surged centre stage in India's general elections on Tuesday after the main opposition Congress Party accused the government of playing politics with people-to-people contact
and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee assured his supporters in Lucknow that ties with Islamabad were on the mend.
The Congress got former foreign secretary J.N. Dixit to brief the media in New Delhi where he revealed that Finance Minister Jaswant Singh's son, Manvendra Singh, a candidate from Rajasthan had requested visas from the Pakistan High Commission for his friends from the border district of Barmer.
Mr Dixit said it was ironical that the son was selectively seeking visas from Pakistan when his father, as foreign minister in December 2001, had snapped all direct travel ties with the country.
He said a majority of Indians and Pakistanis with divided families across the border were still not getting the benefits of the improved ties despite the cricket fanfare.
The remarks appeared aimed to coincide with the polls in the northern states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. A substantial number of Muslim voters, chiefly in Uttar Pradesh, could be the target. Many of them have relatives in Pakistan.
Mr Vajpayee addressed a meeting on Tuesday in Lucknow, from where he is candidate. He exhorted his supporters to accept that without the support of India's Muslims there could be no real progress. He then went on to explain how he had turned down US President Bill Clinton's suggestion during the Kargil conflict to meet the then Pakistan premier Nawaz Sharif in Washington.
"But later we realized that we were wasting money on buying foreign arms. Our aim now is to have a long-term friendship with Pakistan." Mr Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party is coping with lukewarm exit poll surveys, and a less-than-flattering tally reflected in its own internal survey about the poll results.
The next two rounds of polls in Uttar Pradesh are due on May 5 and 10. At a meeting in New Delhi on Tuesday, BJP president Venkaiah Naidu, Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishan Advani, External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha and General Secretary Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, it was decided to tackle the problem squarely.
After more than two hours of brainstorming, which included a flurry of calls to Mr Vajpayee, senior leader Pramod Mahajan, stationed at Lucknow, and Andhra Chief Minister and ally Chandrababu Naidu, the party decided on a formula to shore up its fortunes: 'Carpet bomb Uttar Pradesh with a saturated campaign'. The state still has 50 more seats to go to polls in the remaining phases.
The two children of Congress president Sonia Gandhi whose campaigns in the state have triggered a remarkable enthusiasm among their supporters have compounded Mr Vajpayee's problems in Uttar Pradesh.
While Mr Rahul Gandhi has been campaigning in his Amethi constituency, his sister Priyanka Gandhi has been giving interviews. Her remarks on Mr Vajpayee appeared to be frontal.
