Word: bjp
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...Displaying equal nonchalance were Judeo's masters in the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who suggested the tape was doctored and urged police to discover who entrapped the minister into taking a bribe. (The bribe payer, who claimed to represent an unnamed foreign mining company, has yet to be identified.) Instead of banishing Judeo, the BJP bigwigs said he would still lead the party's campaign for Dec. 1 polls in the state of Chhattisgarh in central India. Defending Judeo, BJP Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani took defiance to daring new levels, declaring he once campaigned while facing charges...
...analyst for the New Delhi-based Center for Study of Developing Societies. "People expect politicians to steal. They don't really mind it unless it affects national security." Even members of the opposition Congress Party say that, in the same situation, they would have done the same. "The BJP has done the best it could under the circumstances," says Congress spokesman Jaipal Reddy. "They didn't want to lose their guy and their reckoning is probably right. This is the kind of thing you can get away with in Indian politics...
...Judeo is the latest in a long line of ministers of every political hue to stand accused. The allegations against him pale in comparison with the disclosures of 2001, when journalists from Tehelka.com, an Internet news service, posed as arms dealers and recorded themselves paying bribes to the then BJP president, Bangaru Laxman, and Jaya Jaitley, friend of Defense Minister George Fernandes. Fernandes resigned but returned to office months later...
...seeming split has huge significance. It was Hindu chauvinists?galvanized by a BJP campaign to undo brick by brick the 16th-century Mughal invasion of the subcontinent?who in 1992 ripped down a mosque supposedly built over a Hindu temple at Ayodhya; that helped propel the BJP to power on a wave of violent Hindu assertion. But upcoming polls may be forcing the BJP to distance itself from the VHP. With four state elections taking place on Dec. 1, and a general election due within the year, the BJP's more moderate coalition partners are pressing it to adopt...
...years, are hardly over. A bombing campaign by Islamic extremists is ongoing in Gujarat and Bombay, while the Hindu hard right, including the VHP, is now promising a national protest campaign over Ayodhya. Moreover, Bidwai points out, the VHP's overseas Indian members are big donors to the BJP. So while India may be witnessing a trial separation within the Hindu nationalist camp, no one is yet predicting a divorce...