BJP urges to speed up recommendation on Afzal

New Delhi, Jan 13 (UNI) Close on heels of the Supreme Court rejecting the curative petition filed by Mohammad Afzal against death sentence in the December December 13, 2001 Parliament attack his case, the BJP today urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Home Minister Shivraj Patil to send their recommendation on the clemency petition pending before the president without any delay.

BJP Spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad said the attack on parliament was not just another terrorist attack but one on India where the leadership of entire political specturm could have been wiped out but for the sacrifice of the security forces who preserved the sanctity of Parliament laying down nine lives.

''The government for the sake of appeasing the voters can't make any compromise on national security and national integrity. The rejection of the review petition by the Supreme Court should inject right sense into the mind of the government,'' he said.

Mr Prasad said the disclosures of US Intelligence agency that Al-Qaeuda network was active in Pakistan had only confirmed India viewing Pakistan as the epicentre of terror network in South Asia.

It was time for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to 'revisit his Havana doctrine' and put an end to the strange Joint Management concepts at once. The country has seen enough of playing around with national security that had reached a scandalous level and could not afford to bear it any further.

Touching upon killing of numerous children in Nithari village in Uttar Pradesh, Mr Prasad said it was an incident of 'national shame' and the BJP would not want to politicise the issue. If only the Uttar Pradesh police were to register the complaints of poor migrant parents, the young lives of several children could have been saved and ghastly crimes could have been averted. It was public knowledge that the nation's biggest state was also the 'mal-governed and mis-governed' state of the country, he added.

UNI