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Jaya's charge 'concocted and without substance', says Fernandes

Defence Minister and Samata Party president George Fernandes today described as "concocted" and "without substance", All India Anna DMK chief J Jayalalitha's charge that by recommending dismissal of the Rabri Devi government in Bihar the BJP-Samata Party combine was attempting to engineer defections and form an alternative government there.

Talking to reporters at the Madras airport, he said the recommendation of the Union Cabinet was to save the people of Bihar.

He said he had been opposing, and continued to oppose, the use of Article 356 of the Constitution to dismiss an elected government unless it was absolutely necessary. "If there was one state where the Article had to be used, it was Bihar," he added.

He alleged that besides breakdown of law and order in Bihar, every paisa that was meant for the development of the state was going to the pocket of those in authority and the treasury was being looted.

For example, in the Eighth Plan, when the gross national product of every state went up by 20 per cent, it went down by 50 per cent in Bihar, he charged.

Asked what he thought the President would do on this matter, Fernandes said he did not want to speculate on what the President would do.

Displaying biting sarcasm towards the Opposition leaders, who opposed the imposition of President's rule in Bihar, he said those who shout from the roof-tops should recall that both H D Deve Gowda and the Gujral governments at the Centre, which had survived at the mercy of the Congress, had dismissed the state governments in Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh.

Their concern for political morality and propriety should not not be momentary. "There should be a limit to hypocrisy of those people," he added.

To another question, he said he did not think the BJP and its allies had a negative attitude towards the Cabinet recommendation.

Asked about Jayalalitha reiterating her demand for dismissal of the DMK government in Tamil Nadu, Fernandes said the situation in Tamil Nadu was different from that in Bihar.

The Tamil Nadu governor has not sent any report to the Centre recommending invocation of Article 356. But the Bihar governor had sent a report to the Centre which is a "damning indictment" of the Rabri Devi government, he pointed out.

UNI

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