Charging Home Minister Shivraj Patil with 'lying' on the issue of detention centres for illegal Bangladeshi immigrants and equating the Sarabjit case with that of Afzal Guru, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday demanded an apology from Home Minister Shivraj Patil, failing which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh must sack him from the Council of Ministers.
The party said the home minister had made a 'false' statement that the central government had not issued any direction regarding detention centres for illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.
The BJP said the minutes of the meeting of the nodal authority of the home ministry which discussed the issue of deportation of the Bangladeshi migrants on January 24, 2007, had clearly stated that 'the state government should set up detention centres for detention of illegally staying foreigners pending their deportation.'
Subsequently, the March 12, 2007, circular of the home minister had clearly underlined the procedure to be adopted for the deportation of Bangladeshi migrants.
Yet again in its meeting of April 25, 2007, minutes of which were sent on May 8, 2007, the ministry had asked the state governments to set up detention centres with their own funds in a time-bound manner.
The BJP said the home minister tried to mislead the nation on the sensitive issue of the security intiative, for "political purposes", and instead of acknowledging these facts, he had accused Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje of politicising the issue.
Talking to media-persons, party spokesman Prakash Javadekar said the party also condemned Patil's "irresponsible" statement comparing the case of Sarabjit with that of Afzal Guru. "Nobody in the country and outside raised any demand for clemency for Afzal on any ground," Javadekar said.
"What is worse is inherent in his utterances, lies an assumption that Pakistan is the spokesman of Indian Muslims," Javadekar added.
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