Vajpayee's unease at Kalam's visit to Gujarat 'natural': BJP

In a virtual endorsement of former President A P J Abdul Kalam's views in his memoir that then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was uneasy with his visit to Gujarat after the 2002 riots, Bihar BJP President C P Thakur today said it was 'natural' for a government to feel uneasy with the visit of the constitutional head to a state ravaged with strife.

In a virtual endorsement of former President A P J Abdul Kalam's views in his memoir that then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was uneasy with his visit to Gujarat after the 2002 riots, Bihar BJP President C P Thakur today said it was 'natural' for a government to feel uneasy with the visit of the constitutional head to a state ravaged with strife.

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"Vajpayee's uneasy at Kalam's visit to Gujarat was only natural as no government of the day would like the constitutional head to visit a state ravaged with strife," Thakur told reporters.

"Even in the states, a government would not be pleased with the Governor visiting a strife-torn region," he said.

Thakur, who was the Union Health Minister in the then NDA government headed by Vajpayee, said that despite the sense of uneasiness with Kalam's visit to Gujarat, Vajpayee did not oppose the latter's decision when he went ahead.

The senior BJP leader also hit out at the political parties for their 'hyprocratic stand' on treating the saffron party as communal or secular "at their whims and not on the basis of ideological consistency."

In an indirect dig at the JD(U) and specifically to the LJP supremo Ramvilas Paswan, he said "Some political parties or politicians have no problem with the BJP's ideological credentials so long as they reap benefits of political power in its association, but they start questioning its ideology the moment the party becomes dispensable."