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Petroleum minister asserts that Karunanidhi will have to go

Union Petroleum Minister and Tamizhaga Rajiv Congress president Vazhapadi K Ramamurthy on Sunday asserted that the dismissal of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government in Tamil Nadu was a "necessity".

Addressing a press conference in Madras, he said the dismissal of the Karunanidhi government would mean fulfillment of duty to the people of Tamil Nadu.

He said the law and order situation in the state was now graver than in 1990 when the DMK government was allegedly patronising the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam militants, which eventually led to the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. (The then DMK government was dismissed on the charge of passing on sensitive information to the LTTE).

Seizure of explosives and arrests of fundamentalists were "grossly inadequate", said Ramamurthy and added that the seizure of explosives was only a tip of the iceberg.

Some senior police officials had gone on record that the police was not given a free hand to deal with the extremists, he added.

Referring to Prime Minister A B Vajpayee's statement in Parliament that the Centre had no plan to invoke Article 356 of the Constitution and dismiss the DMK government, Ramamurthy said Vajpayee had only said that the Article would not be "misused". No government was expected to misuse it, he added.

Asked about the reported exoneration of the DMK in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination in the Jain Commission's final report, Ramamurthy pointed to Tamil Maanila Congress president G K Moopanar's remark that he was aware of the contents of the report 20 days ago.

Twenty days ago, the BJP government had not assumed office and the Gujral government was still in power. Obviously, the United Front government had influenced the final report, he alleged.

Answering a question on the insinuation that the Vajpayee government was trying to stall the publication of the report, Ramamurthy said the BJP-led government was transparent and the report would definitely be made public. The report was being studied now, he added.

UNI

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