Patil rejects Raje’s camp claim

New Delhi, May 19: The Centre and the Rajasthan government locked horns over chief minister Vasundhara Raje’s claim that a suggestion was made to put illegal Bangladeshi migrants in a "transit camp", a charge refuted by Union home minister Shivraj Patil.

The row between the BJP-ruled state and the Centre saw Mr Patil hitting back at Ms Raje on Monday and taking a dig, saying she is "perhaps shaken" after Jaipur serial blasts which brought under scanner illegal Bangladeshi migrants in Rajasthan.

Ms Raje said the state government had written numerous letters to the Centre from time to time on the issue of deportation of Bangladeshi nationals who were finding their way into Rajasthan.

"We wrote to them in June 2007 to say, look we need to do something about this. We got a reply back from them (Centre) saying, well why don’t you just collect them and put them into a transit camp somewhere," Ms Raje told NDTV.

The chief minister said that such a suggestion was received from the home ministry. Asked if the home ministry had formally written to the state government to "round up" illegal Bangladeshis, she said, "Yes, kindly round them up and put them in a transit camp, which you pay for". The chief minister admitted it was something like asking the state to "set up its own Guantanamo Bay". But Mr Patil did not hide his displeasure at Ms Raje’s claims when he refuted her charge and said her statement only exposed her "weakness" in tackling terrorism.

"Perhaps she (Ms Raje) is shaken after the recent blasts and is saying anything that is not true. She should have avoided it (making the statement). She has just exposed her weakness," Mr Patil said. The home minister said that Ms Raje was making one statement after another. "Why she is making such statements, I do not know," he said, adding that, "we are not happy with her behaviour". Ms Raje’s remarks came in the backdrop of the Centre and the Rajasthan government trading charges over the issue of intelligence failure following the serial blasts. (PTI)