BJP worry: back CEC on J&K, attack on Gujarat?

As parliamentary party spokesman V K Malhotra did yesterday alleging that the CEC appeared to be acting at the ‘‘behest’’ of the Congress since Opposition parties wanted the Gujarat polls to be delayed.

So party spokesman Arun Jaitley, who only two days ago criticised the CEC for straying into areas which he called were not his business, said today that there was no question of lowering the Commission’s dignity and it was the job of the Election Commission to conduct free and fair elections.

The decision to tone down its attack on the CEC came after a meeting at the BJP headquarters this afternoon attended by Deputy PM L K Advani. After Lyngdoh’s public snub to a Gujarat district official—he called him a ‘‘joker’’—the hawks in the BJP were in a mood to go in for a confrontation with the CEC on the lines of the T N Seshan-Laloo Yadav spat before the Assembly polls in 1995, when the former chief minister of Bihar refused to be cowed down by Seshan’s diktats.

The party is also said to be upset with an Outlook interview in which Lyngdoh was quoted as saying: ‘‘The people who talk of early elections (in Gujarat) have no authority. So if it is a few mad people who keep talking about it, why should we bother?’’

And Advani said recently that it was the job of Central and state governments to decide whether the situation was conducive for the holding of elections. Today, as wiser counsel prevailed, Jaitley said, ‘‘There is no question of anybody lowering the dignity of the Election Commission. It is part of their constitutional obligation to conduct free and fair elections. The party had only stated what should be the correct and appropriate time when polls should be conducted.’’