New Delhi , April 9: Under increasing fire from all quarters after the Maoists massacred 76 CRPF jawans at Dantewada in Chhattisgarh earlier this week, the worst such incident in the country’s history, Union home minister P. Chidambaram tried to take a leaf out of Lal Bahadur Shastri’s book and offered to resign — in an effort to salvage his position in the government and the Congress Party.
Within hours of the home minister’s resignation offer becoming public on Friday, the Prime Minister’s Office made it known that Dr Manmohan Singh had rejected the home minister’s move. Dr Singh, incidentally, leaves on Saturday morning on a week-long visit to the United States and Brazil, and will be away when the Parliament session resumes on April 15.
Mr Chidambaram’s decision to make his resignation offer known a day before the Prime Minister’s departure could be significant in the expectation of securing Dr Singh’s full backing ahead of a session when the massacre is likely to come up.
Mr Chidambaram, who had told West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee in Lalgarh last Sunday that the “buck stopped with the CM” in the context of political violence in that state, was forced to admit on Friday that the “buck stops at my desk” when pointedly asked by reporters where the responsibility lay for the deaths of the CRPF jawans.
As pointed out in an article in this newspaper on Friday (“Talk less, do more, Mr Chidambaram”), the home minister has of late been landing the government and the party in a series of controversies and problems, including the early December announcement on Telangana that set off a firestorm in Andhra Pradesh.
This is not the first time that Mr Chidambaram has offered to step down from a high position — he had resigned from the Cabinet in 1992 accepting moral responsibility for having invested in Fairgrowth, a company allegedly involved in the securities scam, and then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao had accepted his resignation.
(Former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, who as railway minister in the Nehru Cabinet in the 1950s, had famously resigned from the government after a major train accident in which well over a hundred people had been killed.)
Mr Chidambaram’s resignation offer was also disclosed at a time when neither the main Opposition, the BJP, nor the Left had asked him to step down. In fact, soon after the news spread, the BJP said the home minister should not resign at this juncture as it would be claimed by the Maoists as their victory.
Questions are now being asked in political circles on what prompted the home minister to take this step: was it to silence critics in the party or to project an image of indispensability?
Guessing games are also on in the Congress on possible successors in case the Prime Minister had been inclined to accept the resignation.
Speaking at the CRPF’s Valour Day function here on Friday morning, Mr Chidambaram said: “I have been asked directly or indirectly where the buck stops for what happened in Dantewada. I have no hesitation in saying that the buck stops at my desk.
“I accept full responsibility for what happened in Dantewada. Immediately on my return from Chhattisgarh, I called on the Prime Minister and gave it in writing that I accept full responsibility for what happened.” When pressed repeatedly to elaborate, and asked to clarify when and if he had indeed resigned, the home minister said: “I think I will stop there.”
Shortly after that, a PMO spokesman said: “The home minister gave it (his resignation) in writing the day before yesterday. The Prime Minister has rejected it.”
Late on Friday evening, Mr Chidambaram attended a meeting of the Congress core group at which the Dantewada massacre was among the issues discussed. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, defence minister A.K. Antony and Mr Ahmed Patel, political secretary to the Congress president, were present.
Venkatesh Kesari