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Muzzle Hegde or we will pull down govt, AIADMK tells Vajpayee

Three All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam Union ministers on Thursday asked Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to ensure that Commerce Minister Ramakrishna Hegde stopped his outbursts against their supremo J Jayalalitha.

Failing this, they said, they would oust his government.

The ministers, M Thambi Dubai, R Janarthanan and R K Kumar, in a statement in New Delhi said, ''We feel the prime minister should advise Mr Hegde to either shut up or get out."

They were reacting to the Lok Shakti leader's outburst that the prime minister should consider going in for fresh polls instead of succumbing to Jayalalitha's blackmail.

Recalling that Hegde kept bargaining with the Congress till the last minute before settling for an alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party, the ministers said his statement smacked of an ulterior motive.

Hegde's party, the AIADMK ministers pointed out, has barely three members in the Lok Sabha and has ''no political or moral authority'' to suggest a fresh election.

Tracing the controversy leading to Hegde and Ram Jethmalani launching a vituperative campaign against the AIADMK, the ministers said they (Hegde and Jethmalani) had taken exception to Jayalalitha's demand that all chargesheeted ministers be dropped.

Though Jayalalitha did not mention any names, Jethmalani and Hegde violently reacted to the principled position taken by the AIADMK. ''When there are so many ministers in the council of ministers why these two ministers alone chose to react violently when they were not named is anybody's guess,'' they said.

''On the whole, we feel the latest statement of Mr Hegde is totally uncalled for, unwarranted, unjustified and unethical, particularly in the context of the decision to call a meeting of the coordination committee'' they said.

Petroleum Minister V K Ramamurthy, of the Tamizhaga Rajiv Congress, too, asked Vajpayee to pull up Hegde for his outbursts. "(He should stop) pretending to be the supreme leader of the ruling coalition,'' he said.

Hegde, Ramamurthy said, ''should not have the audacity to suggest that the government should resign and go in for fresh election.''

Refuting Hegde's contention that the AIADMK was blackmailing the BJP government, the petroleum minister said the AIADMK's suggestion that the ministers should resign was intended to cleanse the government.

''If Mr Hegde construes this as blackmailing, I am afraid he has something to hide on charges of corruption against him,'' Ramamurthy said.

UNI

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