Worried BJP asks Raje to act fast
BJP president Rajnath Singh calls a meeting of top leaders to discuss the violence in Rajasthan that claimed several lives amid fears that the issue could snowball into a major crisis for Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje.
BJP president Rajnath Singh called a meeting of top leaders on Friday night to discuss the violence in Rajasthan that claimed several lives amid fears that the issue could snowball into a major crisis for Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje.
Raje informed Rajnath on the phone that she had ordered a high level inquiry into the clashes. Singh advised her not to let the crisis go out of hand, with elections to the state assembly being only six months away.
At Rajnath's residence, central BJP leaders, including Jaswant Singh, Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj, discussed the fallout of the police firing and ways to placate the Gujjars.
Earlier, the BJP had blamed a section of the community for the violence.
The party also sought to put the onus of granting Scheduled Tribe status to Gujjars on the Centre, saying the state government had forwarded to the Centre the report of a committee which went into their demands.
"This happened as some people took the law into their own hands. The agitation took a violent turn in which a policeman was killed," BJP spokesman Prakash Javadekar said.
Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi said, "The state government should take steps to correct the law and order situation."
The agitation had a ripple effect on rail services in and out of New Delhi. Railway officials said agitators uprooted a 2-km long track in Bayana on Friday morning and that three trains were cancelled in Delhi.