Vanzara’s ‘charges’ must be examined
When the RSS, shedding reservations, decided to project Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as a prominent national leader of the BJP and made the saffron party formally adopt him as its campaign chief for the coming general election, the prime mover of the Sangh Parivar should have had a keener appreciation of the possibility that Mr Modi — given his uneven image — might suck his party into all manner of controversies.
Indeed, the RSS’ initial hesitation about the CM was in part drawn from this consideration, although later the Hindutva outfit would abandon caution in the hope that the Gujarat CM would bring in the hardcore Hindu vote on account of his handling of the post-Godhra violence and entice the upwardly mobile middle class at the same time, as this section appears to have grown enamoured of Mr Modi’s marketoriented methods and easy disregard for traditional political propriety.
The recent development regarding Gujarat IPS officer D.G. Vanzara, the Modi government’s go-to man when it came to encounter killings in the state, has shaken up the political spectrum. Mr Vanzara has been in jail for the illegal killings of suspects. He tendered his resignation from service on Tuesday in a long 10-page letter to the authorities (that was rejected by the Gujarat government on Wednesday) in which he brought stinging charges against Mr Modi’s minister of state for home Amit Shah, and as good as said that the alleged fake encounters were conducted at the behest of the state leadership, implying it was the CM himself.
It is hard to miss the irony that while the police officer had to suffer jail and has now decided to resign, Mr Shah, his co-accused in the Tulsi Prajapati murder case, has been raised in the BJP hierarchy and is its general secretary in charge of the UP campaign. Mr Vanzara has said the place of the Gujarat government is not in Gandhinagar, but at the Taloja Central Jail in Navi Mumbai or Sabarmati Central Jail.
This suggests that the CM should be behind bars as his government failed to protect police officers who took orders from the top when they eliminated alleged terrorists. While the Vanzara-instigated drama is before us, a news leak has emerged which speaks of BJP leaders conspiring to get Mr Shah off the hook in the Prajapati murder case.
It’s not enough to question Mr Vanzara’s motives. The points he makes cannot but be judicially examined in any democracy, not least as these concern someone who appears to be in the race for Prime Minister.