What LK Advani said on the issue of arms smuggling during the run-up for 1999 General Elections

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 Lalit Shastri 



Before the General Elections to the Lok Sabha were announced in 1999, the Gujarat police had recovered a huge cache of arms, including AK-47 and AK-56 riffles, bullets, and hand grenades from a well near the residence of Sohrabuddin Sheikh in village Jhiranya near Mahidpur on the Ujjain-Nagda Road in Ujjain district of Madhya Pradesh.

Launching the 1999 election campaign in Madhya Pradesh, where the Congress party was in power and Digvijay Singh was the Chief Minister, the then national President of the BJP, Kushabhau Thakre, had said at a press conference at the State BJP headquarters in Bhopal that Madhya Pradesh had become a haven for arms smuggling. He had even stated categorically that arms were being supplied to the terrorists in Kashmir from this State.

A couple of days after the BJP President had addressed media-persons in the State capital, the then Home Minister L K Advani had addressed another press conference at the VIP Rest House at Lalghati in Bhopal. As State Bureau chief of a prominent national daily, I had posed a direct query and asked Advani to respond to what the national President of the BJP had revealed in connection with the seizure of arms in Ujjain district. Advani feigned ignorance and chose to brush aside the query by stating "let me check about this". He said this with a chip on his shoulder. The Home Minister's response to a question on national security, especially in light of the glaring revelation by the national President of the ruling BJP, was a huge letdown.

After the recovery of the cache of arms, Sohrabuddin and his father Anwar Shiekh were booked under the Arms Act. 

Sohrabuddin spent a year in a Jail in Ujjain in 1999 under the National Security Act. He was also the main accused in the murder of gangster Hamid Lala in Udaipur in 2004, besides many cases of extortion. He was killed in an encounter in 2005.

Postscript: In an entirely unconnected matter which is no less important in terms of national security, I was once again disappointed. Once more, at another press conference when I drew Advani's attention to the cancer of corruption that was eating into the vitals of the nation and asked what was being done to tackle the all-encompassing malaise, he had said: "Corruption will end only when we have public funding of elections". Implying thereby, the political parties were at the root of all corruption and there was no ray of hope for the people of India under the prevailing circumstances.




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