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Venkaiah defends 'gaurav yatra'

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI AUG. 22. The Bharatiya Janata Party president, Venkaiah Naidu, today dismissed the remarks reportedly made by the Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, against the Chief Election Commissioner, J.K. Lyngdoh, with a "no comment'' even as he defended the nomenclature of `gaurav yatra' for the party's election campaign in Gujarat, saying "we are proud of Gujarati culture, proud of the cultural heritage, proud of the people, but not proud about the communal carnage''. After the riots, Gujarat was defamed, and the BJP wants to correct that, he said.

Mr. Modi was reported to have commented on Mr. Lyngdoh's Christian faith, wondering whether there was an Italian connection between the CEC and the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi.

Mr. Naidu was also not willing to comment on the Railway Ministry's report that more than 30 passengers in the reserved coach of the Sabarmati Express, which was burnt to cinders by rioters in Godhra, had made the journey home safely on that fateful February 27 this year. "Let us wait for the inquiry commission's report'' he said.

However, the main subject of Mr. Naidu's press conference here was the drought situation. A party committee with Rajnath Singh as convener had made several recommendations for short-term and long-term handling of drought and floods.

In the short-term, the party would like the Government to give Rs. 1000 a hectare to each farmer (with a ceiling of 2 hectares) as subsidy for agricultural inputs, waiver of interest this year on loans to marginal farmers, strengthening of the public distribution system, adequate allocation of food for food-for-work programmes, payback of any arrears owed to farmers, help in transportation of fodder to scarcity areas, and deepening of existing tubewells and sinking of new tubewells.

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