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Jaya demands inquiry into Bhagwat's dismissal

All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam general secretary Jayalalitha Jayaram today demanded that a commission of retired service chiefs probe the circumstances leading to the unceremonious exit of Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat.

Jayalalitha, whose party is a major constituent of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition at the Centre, said the dismissal was too serious an action for its details to be limited to the government and the country had the right to know the truth.

"The people of India have given us a great responsibility. We should never act in haste and repent at leisure. In particular, the armed forces should be treated with the respect and consideration they have earned by their brave and selfless conduct. We should not allow personal or political motives to dictate the choice of officers and the removal of others," she said.

She urged Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee , Union Home Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani and Defence Minister George Fernandes to immediately constitute the commission to determine whether Bhagwat had been treated fairly.

On the government's claim that national security is involved, she said if the admiral was a danger to national security, he should have been served a show-cause notice and given an opportunity to defend himself.

It is also difficult to believe that an officer who was appointed to the highest post could have got this far if he had indeed been guilty of the charge being made so casually against him, she said.

Jayalalitha said Bhagwat had the reputation of being a strategic thinker and was responsible for both the strategic defence review as well as the long-term forces planning perspective. Quoting his successor Adm Sushil Kumar, she said he had done much to prepare the country for the new era of cyber war and information technology.

With such a record, it was pertinent to remember the cooked-up ISRO case in which top scientists working on the cryogenic engine programme were framed, she said. Till today, the hidden hand behind the frame-up and its Indian accomplices have not been booked. "It has to be determined whether Adm Bhagwat is a victim of forces that do not want the Indian Navy to be modernised," she said.

After so many years of service to the nation, during which he had seen action in Goa and Bangladesh, the admiral should at least have been given an opportunity to explain himself before an independent commission, she said. "It is deeply regrettable that an action with incalculable consequences on the morale and determination of the armed forces was taken without even the Cabinet being consulted."

Jayalalitha said the Navy Act, 1957, was very clear on how a deputy chief of naval staff should be selected. After reading reports of the remarks made by the defence ministry's "favoured candidate", it was clear that Admiral Bhagwat might have had good reason to refuse to accept him, she added.

"If it is true that the first action of the new naval chief was to approve this officer as the deputy chief of naval staff, then it adds weight to the charge that personalities and not policies were behind the unseemly dismissal," she said.

Swamy demands a judicial inquiry

In New Delhi, Jayalalitha's one-time bete noire and now ally Subramanian Swamy of the Janata Party demanded a judicial investigation by a sitting judge of the Supreme Court into the matter.

He demanded that the prime minister and defence minister stop the "injurious and insidious campaign of piecemeal charges" against the admiral and instead publish a white paper of charges against him.

If Vajpayee and Fernandes believed in what they said, then full-fledged court-martial proceedings were in order, not press conferences, he quipped.

He said this was the "typical RSS facist approach" fraught with a huge danger to democracy. He warned that it could demoralise the armed forces and erode their faith in civilian justice.

Swamy termed Fernandes's order to appoint Vice-Admiral Harinder Singh as principal staff officer of the navy illegal. According to him, rule 134 framed in 1965 under section 184 of the Navy Act is clear that "appointments made by the government of captain and above ranks in the navy are mandatorily on the recommendation of the chief of naval staff and not the other way round".

He said he had written to Vajpayee in his capacity as a member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence in October that Fernandes was trying to dilute the naval vigil against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Bhagwat had in 1994 done a "national service" by tracking down the vessel Ahat which was clandestinely bringing Krishnaswamy alias Kittu, the second most important LTTE leader, along with arms and narcotics, to India. So, he said, it needs to be probed if there was LTTE pressure on the minister to remove Bhagwat.

UNI

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