Togadia stuck, Parishad dithers

Today’s adjournment of the case was prompted by the VHP counsel’s demand that the entire transcript of Togadia’s speech here on April 13 (on the basis of which the FIR was filed and he was arrested) be made available to them. Togadia’s local counsel Onkar Singh Lakhawat said the full transcript was necessary to enable them to argue the case. The VHP’s own copy of the video had been confiscated by police, he said, a charge later denied by the Superintendent of Police.

Additional district judge Deepak Kachwaha directed the prosecution to keep the full transcript ready on Monday morning when the bail application hearing will take place.

Describing it as a ‘‘right under Hindutva’’, VHP international president Ashok Singhal today said the trishul diksha programme would be intensified in Rajasthan. ‘‘Even if Parishad leader Pravin Togadia is in judicial custody, trishul diksha would continue everywhere…. Diksha is not a politically motivated plan of the VHP but is a right under Hindutva,’’ Singhal told a press meet here.

Trident distribution to Bajrang Dal activists would continue as per schedule in Bali, Bheenmal and Nokha in Rajasthan, he said.

The seemingly dilatory tactics adopted by the VHP today indicated that the Sangh Parivar is still trying to work out a strategy to counter the Rajasthan government’s so far successful crackdown on its activities. VHP vice-president Acharya Giriraj Kishore said every prant kendra of the VHP throughout the country will send petitions to the Prime Minister and the President against the arrest.

Meanwhile, the Gehlot government has made it clear that if Togadia resumes his ‘‘illegal’’ activities if and when he is released on bail, the government will once again repeat what it did on April 13. There is no ban on religious meetings, but any distribution of the so-called trishuls or inflammatory speeches will be dealt with firmly, a government spokesman said.