BJP demands MDMA probe report, white paper on inflation

Chennai, Apr 29 (UNI) The BJP today demanded that the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre come out with a report on the progress achieved in the probe on the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by the Multi Disciplinary Monitoring Agency (MDMA).

Addressing a press conference here, BJP President Rajnath Singh asked the Centre to come out with the report of the MDMA constituted by the erstwhile BJP-led NDA government to unravel the conspiracy behind the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991 at Sriperumbudur near here.

Mr Singh also demanded a white paper from the UPA government on rising inflation and denounced Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's explanation that inflation was a global phenomenon.

'' We reject this explanation of the Prime Minister and Finance Minister P Chidambaram,'' he said.

Replying to a question on AICC General Secretary Rahul Gandhi's statement that neither the Congress nor the members of his family had any animosity towards the killers of his father, Mr Singh pointed out that Congress President and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi had then suspected that the DMK, now its key ally, was part of the conspiracy. The DMK was then in the NDA coalition.

However, in the last four years since the UPA had been in power with the DMK crossing over to it, ''not a word on the MDMA progress was being uttered by the Congress-led government at the Centre,'' he alleged.

It was surprising that with Ms Gandhi in full command of the UPA government nothing was happening about the Rajiv Gandhi assassination conspiracy. Hence, the BJP was demanding a report on the progress in the probe by the MDMA, he said.

The BJP President alleged that in 1998, Ms Gandhi had brought down the United Front government on the issue that the DMK was part of the conspiracy behind the assassination of her husband.

Mr Singh, who was on his way to Karnataka to campaign for the BJP, which was hoping to come to power on its own this time in the next month's Assembly polls, said issues relating to inflation, price rise of essential commodities and food crisis, which the UPA government had failed to curtail, would be the main poll plank in the elections in that state.

On the contentious Rama Sethu issue with regard to the Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project (SSCP), Mr Singh appealed to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and DMK Chief M Karunanidhi to ''re-engineer the project and implement it without affecting the the Sethu, which he called a symbol of national unity and faith, if not a place of worship.'' UNI VV ROY HS RAI1323