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Fernandes rejects 'right-wing Hindu' label for Centre

Defence Minister George Fernandes today said the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government at the Centre has no hidden agenda.

Allegations of a hidden agenda have surfaced after the recent attacks on Christians in different parts of the country.

Fernandes said the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government had been projected unfairly in India and abroad as a Hindu rightist government.

Speaking at the Foreign Correspondents Club in New Delhi, the Samata Party politician said the government is a coalition and the different parties have agreed on a national agenda for governance. The government is acting according to that agenda and has no hidden agenda to promote the Hindu right wing, he said.

Fernandes, who led a three-member ministerial team to Orissa to inquire into the killing of Australian missionary Graham Stewart Stains and his children at Manoharpur village of Keonjhar district on January 22, said there was no clue why they were targeted.

There had been no conflict between Christians and non-Christians in the area, but for minor verbal clashes, he said. Nor was there any evidence to show that the Bajrang Dal was involved in the murder.

Fernandes said Stains was a popular man in the region and used to visit Manoharpur village once every year to attend the religious fair there. An outsider, he had nothing to do with the village as his work with leprosy patients was in the neighbouring district of Mayurbhanj.

Fernandes said his team of ministers was given a memorandum by the people of the area, asking for security. They said they had made several representations to Chief Minister Janaki Ballabh Patnaik and other authorities regarding the threats from Dara Singh, prime accused in the Stains' murders.

Singh, Fernandes said, had been leading an anti-cow-slaughter campaign in the area.

Asked how Home Minister Lal Kishienchand Advani had given a clean chit to the Bajrang Dal in connection with the murders, Fernandes said he must have got information about it even before the ministerial team visited Orissa.

He rejected the charge that a judicial inquiry has been instituted merely to delay investigations into the case and pointed out that the judge had been given just two months to submit his report. This, he said, was proof of the government's seriousness about the matter.

UNI

The Christian attacks row

The national agenda for governance

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