A possible switch?

• Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala recently wrote a letter to leaders of regional parties to bewa...

• Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala recently wrote a letter to leaders of regional parties to beware of the “sinister designs of the BJP in general and Deputy Prime Minister Advani in particular”. This was of course an angry reaction to Advani asking the voters of Haryana to vote either for the BJP or for the Congress, but not for any regional party.
However, the voters in general and the secular allies of the BJP in particular should ask themselves if the issues omitted by the BJP from its agenda is to make it acceptable to the Sabha after the elections. For example, the BJP has been telling its restive parivar, such as the RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal, that it could not build the Ram mandir in Ayodhya because the party had no majority in Parliament to make the required legislation. This means if the BJP gets a majority now, no matter with the added votes of secular supporters believing in the assurance of not implementing controversial issues, the party is very likely to pass a law facilitating the building of the temple. The least the secular allies of the BJP, especially its new-found Muslim friends, should do, is to get an assurance from the PM and the DPM that they will not switch over to the BJP agenda even if the party gets a majority on its own in Parliament.

— N. Kunju Delhi

Kolkata as powerhouse

• It is about time that somebody recognised the potential of Kolkata — especially in an intellectually intensive sector like IT (‘After Bangalore, Premji eyes Kolkata, IE April 5). I would like to commend Azim Premji for this decision, which I am sure will earn him handsome returns in the mid- to long-term. It would, possibly, also help us Calcuttans to have more opportunities to get back.

— Pratap Ghose On e-mail

Sonia on the mind

• Why can’t Sonia Gandhi be a leader to our great nation? No, it is not the foreign origins issue. Something bothers us about her. It goes back to late eighties, I guess, when Express broke the story about Bofors. Had Sonia played any role in this? Even if her son gets a chance as a PM a few years later, what influence will she have on him? Does anything in Sonia Gandhi’s past reassure us about her powers of decision making, especially in situations like Kargil, US pressure to give in on nuclear capping, yielding ground to Pakistan on Kashmir, and so on?

— Venkat Vagvala On e-mail

Honestly speaking

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• Let me make it clear at the outset that I like a lot of things the NDA has done, like the national highway project, the telecom policy, and so on. But in his article, ‘Honest money’ (IE, April 5), Balbir Punj gave all the credit for the beneficial changes to the NDA, whereas the foundations were laid by the Rao-led Congress government in the early nineties. At that time, the BJP had strongly criticised the Congress for such moves. Punj mustn’t mislead the gullible public for the sake of winning elections!

—Prahlad On e-mail

• I have serious objections to Punj referring to the Congress Party as the “Grand Old Party”. Fossil is the right term to use (‘Honest money’). It has some shape but no life!

— Hari Pai On-mail

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