‘Modi needs a certificate, he will get it’

Snubbed by the Government when they first demanded Modi’s replacement, allies like the TDP, JD(U) and Trinamool had to suffer the ignominy all over again when none from the BJP paid any attention to their clamour for relief and rehabilitation as agenda number one.

Leaving it to the Election Commission to decide the dates of the polls, Advani assured the House that the Centre would like to see every registered voter cast his vote. He had earlier angered the Opposition by saying ‘‘polls reduce tension’’ and that ‘‘if one or two incidents after the return of normalcy leads to talk of why you can’t hold polls, then you can’t hold polls anywhere in the country.’’

Opposition members, who pointed out that many people in the state did not possess identity cards or had lost them in the riots, were also not satisfied with his statement that cards would not be insisted upon if the Election Commission were unable to complete the process of issuing them.

Advani even tried to bait the Congress by making the first move on a suggestion by Samata’s Prabhunath Singh — of all parties agreeing to impose President’s rule ahead of every Assembly poll if the BJP and Congress, being the largest parties on either side, were agreed on it — but it was promptly rejected by Kamal Nath who said the Gujarat government must be made to go first.

Defending the dissolution, Advani said, ‘‘Article 174 is very clear. It is binding on the Governor to accept the recommendation for dissolution of the Assembly if it is made by a chief minister with a majority. It’s totally wrong and highly unfair to say two RSS pracharaks (Gujarat Governor Sunder Singh Bhandari and Narendra Modi) have got together and dissolved the Assembly.’’

In an attempt to deflate Opposition demands for tabling of the forensic report on the burning of the Sabarmati Express coach at Godhra, he said, ‘‘You don’t need a forensic report to tell you that it had been burnt from inside. It was very apparent to me when I went there and had a look at the coach.’’

He targeted the Opposition, especially the Congress, for describing the Gujarat riots as ‘‘a genocide.’’

‘‘I was a witness to what happened in Delhi in 1984. I will still not call it a genocide. Use of such a word sends a wrong message to the world. Ours is a secular country and will always remain one. You don’t have to impose secularism.’’

Earlier, the BJP let its other MPs from Gujarat do the talking for Modi. Kirit Somaiyya, who opened the BJP defence, was the only exception, but again a Gujarati from Mumbai. All took strong exception to CPM veteran Basudeb Acharia’s remark that ‘‘thousands have been raped in Gujarat,’’ leading to noisy scenes and interruptions galore.

Sonia Gandhi intervened only once, rising to clarify that she had never uttered the words ‘‘Godse’s Gujarat.’’

Her partyman Kamal Nath said that Modi’s decision to go for early polls had more to do with ‘‘time catching up’’ than the ‘‘love for going back to the people.’’