Dr.Swamy's press release dt.15.3.2004

STATEMENT OF DR.SUBRAMANIAN SWAMY, PRESIDENT OF JANATA PARTY
MADE IN CHENNAI ON 15.03.2004

1. The Election Commission has held that personal attacks are not part of the Model Code. This also means that to avoid such attacks, no one should make false claims about one’s own personal life. If one does so, it is within the Model Code to set right the record by others who know the truth.
Ms.Sonia Gandhi’s interview published in Hindu yesterday (March 14, 2004) is an example of this aspect. In that she has made false claims, explicitly or by allusion, about her personal life for public sympathy, aggrandizement and electoral advantage. For example:
(i) She has stated: that she ‘fell in love’ with Rajiv Gandhi “in Cambridge”, creating the false impression that they were students together in Cambridge University. She had also claimed to be so in the Lok Sabha’s Who’s Who biographical compilation till I submitted to the Speaker a letter from the University Registrar that she was never a student there. When asked to explain by the Speaker, she blandly informed him that it was a “typing mistake”! It qualifies for the Book of World Records for the longest typing mistake.
The question that should have been asked of her by the Hindu Correspondent is: what she was doing in Cambridge and where in fact she was educated, if at all anywhere.
(ii) She has claimed that she looked after Mrs.Indira Gandhi’s household work and “practically took over” Indira’s personal side.
This is false. First, Indira Gandhi forced her to run a separate kitchen because she had insisted on cooking beef dishes. Second, during the Bangla Desh War in 1971 she fled to Italy leaving Mrs.Gandhi alone. In 1977, she forced her husband to go with her and the children and hide in the Italian Embassy in Delhi after Mrs.Indira Gandhi was defeated by the Janata Party. The then Prime Minister Morarji Desai had to intervene to bring them back. Third, she had threatened her mother-in-law to migrate to Italy with her two children in 1982, if Ms.Maneka Gandhi was not thrown out of 1, Safdarjung Road.
(iii) Ms.Sonia Gandhi has tried to make out in the Hindu interview that she made a tightly knit family with her husband. This is false. The fact is that Rajiv Gandhi had after his return from his visit to Moscow and Teheran, in February 1991, had told her that he wanted an amicable separation from her.
He had decided to effect the separation from her after the General Elections, but was assassinated. Had he lived, she would have been sent back to Italy in June 1991 with a generous financial settlement.
Their relations had become so bad that on the last day of his life, on the evening of May 21, 1991, before flying to Sriperumbudur from Visakapatnam, she said some awful things on the phone to Rajiv Gandhi when the latter had called his Secretary to find out how the children were doing. She had wanted to make sure that he kept his fateful Sriperumbudur appointment.
2. Ms.Sonia Gandhi’s disdain for Rajiv Gandhi is amply brought out by her party’s alliance with those who praise the killer’s of her husband, or bringing into the party those whom Rajiv Gandhi had immensely disliked and been harmed by.

3. She states in her interview. “I have always felt very comfortable” with Vajpayee. Naturally !! They protect each other. Since she has much to hide. She has to keep the Prime Minister humoured. For the BJP, Ms.Sonia Gandhi is a convenient leader of the opposition who does not make an issue of import of sugar from Pakistan, the illegal release of terrorists in the Kandhahar IA flight hijack episode, or any other issue where the Prime Minister’s culpability is there. Her betrayal of the opposition cause of forming a secular alternative government in 1999 is known to all. What is not known is that she did it in collusion with Vajpayee.

4. I have been in touch with our Ministry of External Affairs on the recent developments in Srilanka. I have advocated the following six steps in India’s interest:
(a) Sri Lankan Government be persuaded to unilaterally announce the adoption of quasi-federal constitution on the Indian pattern, with the North, East, and plantation areas as separate areas. This scheme has already been agreed to in the 1987 Indo-Srilanka Accord.
(b) The implementation should proceed with disarmament of the rebels. The East could begin first. Trincomalee may be made the capital of the state, and jobs promised for all disarmed militants. India can assist in opening educational institutions like IITs and IIMs.
(c) All illegal tax collections by the LTTE should be prevented.
(d) Further negotiations begin with an inclusive body of Tamil representatives.
(e) Rehabilitation work in Amaparai and Batticola districts begin with full cooperation of NGOs from India.
(f) Norway be asked to mind its business, since it’s track record in Israel-Palestinian issue and the Tigers issue is so bad that they are unfit for being mediators.
(g) India should sent troops to Srilanka only if two divisions of the Indian Army and a squadron of the IAF are allowed to be stationed in a specially constructed cantonment in Colombo, and Sri Lanka assists in capturing Prabhakaran and Pottu Amman wanted in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.
(h) If “Col Karuna” wants Indian security against assassination, India should provide it in a compact with Israel.
5. I congratulate President Musharraf for speaking the truth—Vajpayee has capitulated in the Kashmir issue, and hence should apologise to the nation for it.

(SUBRAMANIAN SWAMY)