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India's Hardline Hindu Home Minister Appointed Deputy Premier
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| India's new deputy Prime Minister, Lal Krishna
Advani
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NEW DELHI, June
30 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Indian Home Minister Lal
Krishna Advani, seen as a hardline Hindu nationalist, was promoted
deputy prime minister Saturday, June 29, 2002, in a shake-up of Prime
Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's coalition government, officials said.
The presidential
palace announcement said Advani, who is the most powerful man after
Vajpayee in the ruling Hindu nationalist BJP party, will continue as
home minister, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.
Media reports
Saturday said Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh was set to swap
portfolios with Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha in the cabinet
shake-up.
Speaking after
the widely-expected promotion, Advani said he was "extremely
grateful" to Vajpayee.
The 74-year-old
Advani, who studied law in the Pakistani city of
Karachi
before the subcontinent's partition in 1947, is the seventh leader in
the history of independent
India
to become deputy premier.
He first held
public office in 1967, becoming
India
's first Hindu nationalist broadcasting minister a decade later and
general secretary of the BJP in 1980.
Advani, who is
now seen as a successor to Vajpayee, favors a hardline Indian policy
for rival
Pakistan
.
The home
minister, who also views Muslim militancy in Indian Kashmir as
cross-border terrorism from
Pakistan
, has steadfastly refused to snap his political ties with hardline
Hindu groups.
He fired the
imagination of
India
's Hindu masses in 1992 by launching a controversial drive to build a
temple on the site of a Moghul-built mosque, which led to the razing
of the 16th-century shrine by Hindu zealots in 1996 in the pilgrimage
town of
Ayodhya
.
The sacrilege
sparked nationwide Hindu-Muslim riots which left more than 2,000
people, mostly Muslims, dead.
But Analysts said
his promotion was a more a political signal than an administrative
move.
"Although
the post of deputy prime minister is not constitutional, Advani's
promotion clearly states that Vajpayee has found someone to succeed
him in the BJP party as well as in the government if need be,"
political analyst Anand Ojha said.
Advani became
president of the BJP in 1993, appointed home minister five years later
when Vajpayee formed a shaky coalition government.
Coalition sources
said Advani's promotion was among a number of changes to be announced
shortly by Vajpayee aimed at putting the finishing touches to a
long-awaited cabinet reshuffle, AFP said.
BJP president
Jana Krishnamurthy who resigned as BJP president earlier Saturday said
he has agreed to accept a cabinet post.
His previous role
is likely to be filled by Venkaiah Naidu, the minister for rural
development, the sources said.
The cabinet
reshuffle had recently become a pressing concern for Vajpayee
following the resignation of one minister and the appointment of
another as parliament speaker.
Coal and mines
minister Ram Vilas Paswan quit the cabinet in May 2002 in protest
against sectarian violence in western
Gujarat
state in which more than 1,000 people were killed.
Industry minister
Manohar Joshi walked out a week later following his nomination to the
speaker's post.
The sources said
that Vajpayee was also likely to bring in new faces from inside the
BJP party as well as from its NDA allies in the cabinet.
Vajpayee last
carried out a major reshuffle in September in a move that was meant to
speed up economic reforms.
Several new faces
were brought in and privatization minister Arun Shourie, who has been
pushing
India
's disinvestments program, was elevated to cabinet rank.
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