VHP campaign plan may work against new BJP initiative

By Our Special Correspondent

LUCKNOW, SEPT. 16. While the Bharatiya Janata Party continued to send agreeable signals to the minorities in keeping with the political line pronounced by its president, Mr. Bangaru Laxman, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad has announced plans to launch a fresh campaign against ISI agents in a tone set to spoil any positive results of the BJP efforts.

The VHP would bring pressure on the Government to take action against illegal madrasas and telephone booths coming up in military areas from where ISI agents were functioning, said Mr. Purushottam Narain Singh, Regional Organising Secretary of VHP. The new campaign would be launched at Varanasi next week on the occasion of the 75th birth anniversary of the VHP leader, Mr. Ashok Singhal, he said.

According to the VHP leader, people associated with ISI activities were building houses in government colonies in a planned manner. Also madrasas and mosques were coming up in no man's land on the India- Nepal border. The VHP would bring force on the Government to remove all such structures, he said.

Mr. Bangaru Laxman, on the other hand, sent fresh overtures to Muslims to associate themselves with the BJP at his first public meeting in UP after taking over as the BJP president held at Kanpur on Friday. The ISI should not be identified with the Muslims as a whole, he said while asking for a ban on organisations aiding and abetting the activities of the ISI.

The BJP president announced that the controversial UP Religious Places Bill had been put into the cold storage. The Bill was awaiting the President's assent for the past several months after it had been passed by the UP legislature. The Government, however, never said that it was a dead letter. It has been for Mr. Laxman to make an announcement now that the Bill has gone for good.

The assault on an intelligence officer recently in a hostel of Aligarh Muslim University, he said, was an isolated incident, though serious. Such incidents should not be interpreted as something to do with BJP's relations with the minorities.

He said Muslims would be given important assignments in his party and the national executive of the BJP would chalk out detailed plans to implement the Nagpur agenda.

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