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Bhagwat jeopardised top secret project vital to national security: Fernandes

The Bharatiya Janata Party-led government will not collapse on the Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat sacking issue, Defence Minister George Fernandes has said.

''Our government is not going, it will remain stable and strong,'' Fernandes told the media yesterday defending the dismissal of former chief of naval staff.

He once again ruled out a Joint Parliamentary Probe into the issue.

''Anyone who is sacked can approach a political party or a politician in the Opposition and press for a JPC probe,'' he said in response to persistent queries at the media conference at which Information and Broadcasting Minister Pramod Mahajan and Parliamentary Affairs Minister P R Kumaramangalam were also present.

The defence minister claimed that he had never called Admiral Bhagwat a national security risk.

The defence minister evaded a question as to why efforts were not being made to convince All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham general secretary J Jayalalitha on the Bhagwat issue.

Fernandes said the government was ready for a debate on the Bhagwat issue in Parliament, where it was expected to be taken up on April 15 or later.

He said he had refrained from going to the media earlier realising the limits to which matters related to national security could be debated in public. ''So far I had not felt the need for joining issue with the one-sided campaign which had been going on outside Parliament. But now I feel the need for clarifying things as the Congress and the two Communist parties had taken up the issue inside Parliament.''

Asked whether Admiral Bhagwat had been dismissed, he said the withdrawal of pleasure doctrine as enshrined in Article 310 of the Constitution and Section 15 of the Navy Act had been invoked. There were other options as well but the government chose this particular course of action, he explained.

Giving reasons for the termination of the services of Admiral Bhagwat, Fernandes cited deliberate defiance of the authority of the government in more than one case, going against the Navy Act by trying to hurt the careers of those subordinate to him, misleading the government by lying on matters where he should be briefing the government with facts and his exposing and jeopardising a top secret project vital to the national security.

He exemplified each and every charge made by him but refused to divulge the 'top secret' project vital to the national security.

UNI

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