Advani is deputy prime minister ahead of cabinet recast=20 By Ajit Sahi, Indo-Asian News Service
New Delhi, June 29 (IANS) L.K. Advani was appointed India's deputy prime minister Saturday, making official a status he already enjoyed as Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's number two man in the cabinet. A communiqu=E9 from President K.R. Narayanan said Advani was being designat= ed deputy prime minister and would continue to hold the crucial home portfolio= =2E "The president of India, as advised by the prime minister, has directed tha= t Lal Krishna Advani, home minister, will be designated as deputy prime minister," the communiqu=E9 sa= id. "He will continue to look after the ministry of home affairs." The announcement came a day after Vajpayee had told a crowded press conference in his Lok Sabha constituency of Lucknow that he was mulling the option of appointing a deputy prime minister. Although the Indian Constitution does not provide for the post of a deputy prime minister, the tradition of naming senior leaders to the post began soon after India gained freedom from British rule in 1947. Advani will the seventh deputy prime minister and the first in 11 years. Sources in Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said Advani's elevation was of a piece with the prime minister's move to comprehensively recast his cabinet and the party on Monday to rejuvenate their dipping fortunes. The recognition as deputy prime minister would accord Advani, who is currently serving his fourth Lok Sabha term, a higher standing and increase his influence on the government and the party, a party source said. Advani, who would be 75 years old in four months, was born at Karachi (now in Pakistan) on November 8, 1927. He is a former president of the BJP, whic= h leads Vajpayee's multi-party coalition. He and Vajpayee are the party's biggest stars. "The BJP has a tradition of collective leadership and his (Advani's) appointment is on the lines of that reality," Rajya Sabha BJP MP Balbir Punj, a Vajpayee confidante, told IANS shortly after Advani's appointment. On several occasions, such as when Vajpayee was hospitalised for a week at Mumbai in June 2001 for knee-replacement surgery, Advani had been in charge of running the government. Immediately after his appointment, Advani said there would be no change in his "job profile". "I was being consulted on important matters when the prime minister was away. This decision formalises that arrangement," Advani told reporters who had thronged to his residence. The elevation "reflects the confidence that the prime minister and the allies have reposed in me," Advani said. The main opposition Congress party reacted sharply to Advani's appointment. Said Congress spokesman S. Jaipal Reddy: "The appointment is not so much Advani's elevation as a lowering of Vajpayee's status." Advani is reportedly playing a crucial role in fine-tuning Monday's cabinet shuffle, an exercise that would also see the installation of a new BJP president. BJP president K. Jana Krishnamurthy is expected to join Vajpayee's cabinet and make way for another leader, possibly Rural Development Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu. With the cabinet-party shake-up, Vajpayee aims to revive the fortunes of hi= s party that has lost power in seven states since 1998 when he became prime minister for the second time. A BJP leader requesting anonymity said Advani's appointment is also in line with the party's decision to re-adopt an aggressive pro-Hindu stance, which it had jettisoned four years ago to become acceptable to secular allies and take power in New Delhi. Unlike Vajpayee who is seen as a moderate, Advani has long held an image of a Hindu hawk. That position was bolstered by Advani's forceful participatio= n in a 1989-92 controversial campaign to replace the 16th century Babri mosqu= e with a temple at Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh which led to its demolition by Hindu zealots in December 1992. Advani also has close links with the Hindu supremacist Rashtriya Swayamseva= k Sangh (RSS), the BJP's ideological guide. He carries sweeping leverage with affiliated Hindu groups such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bajrang Dal. Advani's elevation comes just two months after the BJP's national meet at Goa belligerently revived its pro-Hindu ideology, brushing off all criticis= m against its government in Gujarat over widespread communal violence there. Last week, the BJP appointed another Hindu hardliner, 47-year-old Lok Sabha MP Vinay Katiyar, as the head of the party in Uttar Pradesh, India's politically most vital state where it lost power in February and where the party is now a junior partner in a coalition government. Another Hindu extremist, Sports and Youth Affairs Minister Uma Bharti, is widely tipped to head the BJP in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh= , where it has been in political wilderness for a decade and aspires to win assembly polls in 2003. Schooled in Karachi, Advani studied law at Mumbai. He has lived in New Delh= i since the 1950s. Those who have earlier been deputy prime ministers are Vallabhbahi Patel (under Jawaharlal Nehru), Morarji Desai (under Indira Gandhi), Jagjivan Ram and Charan Singh (under Morarji Desai), Y.B. Chavan (under Charan Singh) an= d Devi Lal (under V.P. Singh and Chandra Shekhar). --Indo-Asian News Service =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-W-E-B---S-I-T-E-=-=-= To Subscribe/Unsubscribe from GoaNet | http://www.goacom.com/goanet =================================================================== For (un)subscribing or for help, Contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dont want so many e=mails? 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