Advani to move adjournment motion on Nandigram tomorrow

New Delhi, Mar 19 (UNI) After an unsuccessful bid to raise the Nandigram violence issue in the Rajya Sabha today, the BJP will serve an adjournment motion in the Lok Sabha to force a debate on the issue.

BJP Parliamentary Party Spokesperson Sushma Swaraj said Leader of the Opposition L K Advani will move a similar motion in the Lower House like his Rajya Sabha counterpart Jaswant Singh, who had served it under rule 168 condemning the barbaric violence in Nandigram and adjoining areas of East Midnapore district in West Bengal.

The BJP members in Rajya Sabha wanted to inform the country about the unbelievable things they had seen and heard when a nine member NDA delegation led by Mr Advani visited the trouble-torn Nandigram, Ms Swaraj said.

The Government which has majority in the House should have allowed the Opposition to have a say on the issue as they could have easily defeated the motion as numbers were on their side. ''But they did not dare to face the truth,'' she alleged.

The violence at Nandigram has stirred the conscience of the nation but Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi had adopted a ''divine silence'' as their survival depends on the ''artificial support system'' of the left parties, Ms Swaraj said. These two leaders did not dare to say even what the Left Front allies in West Bengal were speaking in public, she added.

''This Government is unsure of its support after withdrawal of support by the Samajwadi Party and Telangana Rashtra Samiti,'' she said.

She said with the Congress lending its silent support to the ''state-sponsored genocide'' they will have to take an equal blame as the perpetrator -- CPI(M).

Narrating what the NDA MPs had seen, Ms Swaraj said the number of missing people was still a mystery.

''We have heard complaints of numerous cases of missing people and things will come out only when the river in the area is searched by the CBI which has received the list of 15 dead protestors.

''The moving in of crocodiles and swarming of house flies all indicate towards the presence of bodies drowned under water.

Villagers have seen policemen snatching bodies which were still to be accounted for,'' she alleged.

Ms Swaraj said NDA had sought invoking Article 355 and direct the West Bengal Government to withdraw the SEZ status given to the Indonesian firm. Trinamool Congress MP Dinesh Trivedi, who was present at the press conference, said his party wanted dismissal of the West Bengal government and imposing President's rule in the state.

He said the CPI(M) spared no opportunity to discuss the violence against workers in Gurgoan in Haryana while opposing discussion about violence in Nandigram on the ground that it involved law and order handling by a state government.

UNI