Vajpayee, who was in Calcutta today, said Thursday?s massacre at Senari could have been avoided had the Congress supported the resolution imposing President?s rule in Bihar.

?One massacre after another is taking place in Bihar. It could only have been stopped by the imposition of the Article 356,? he said. Vajpayee pointed out that the Congress had imposed Article 356 on 58 occasions and had never been opposed to its use on principle, unlike the Left parties.

Describing the Left as opportunists, the Prime Minister said: ?After yesterday?s massacre, more Dalits will be killed..The Congress has ensured this. As far as the Leftists are concerned, they are self-seekers and support or oppose President?s rule according to their convenience.?

Echoing Vajpayee, in Delhi, BJP vice-president J.P. Mathur lashed out at Congress president Sonia Gandhi and West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu for playing into the hands of casteist elements in Bihar.

Saying that they could not ??escape blame?? for the Senari carnage, Mathur said: ??They should now own up responsibility and ask Rabri Devi to resign and pave the way for fresh elections.?? The BJP leader said Basu, who had defended the Rabri government, was now silent. ??Basu did not open his mouth. It appears Basu is encouraging class war in Bihar,?? he said.

Mathur said he was surprised at Rabri Devi?s statement in the Assembly yesterday that she did not visit the massacre site as the people there did not vote for the Rashtriya Janata Dal. ??The RJD leaders are interested in their votebank only,?? he said. A BJP team comprising vice-president K.L. Sharma, general secretary Sangpriya Gautam and Lok Sabha MP C.P. Thakur will visit Senari tomorrow, he added.

Continuing with his tirade against the Congress, Vajpayee said the party was desperate for power though they have been in opposition for only a short while. ?Woh log chhatphata rahe hain jaise paani ke bahar machhli (The Congress is gasping like a fish without water),?? he said.

Vajpayee exhorted the Congress to help him govern the country better. In this context, he said the BJP had played a much more constructive role when it was in Opposition. ?For 40 years we had been in the Opposition, but we never crossed the lakshmanrekha,? he said.

Vajpayee said he had no objection if the Congress came to power in a democratic way, but, he added, the party seldom followed democratic norms. ?They (Congress) are not the leaders of people. In the Lok Sabha, they jump into the well and disrupt proceedings of the House. They are not playing the role of a constructive Opposition,? Vajpayee said.

Underlining the need to build up a consensus with Opposition parties, the Prime Minister said every one?s support was needed to take the country to new heights in the next millennium. He referred to former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao?s gesture of sending him (when he was leader of the Opposition) to Geneva to represent the country on the Kashmir issue.

The Centre cut the interest rate (from 13.5 to 14 per cent) on loans given to states from small savings collections. It also decided to hand over to states their share of excise duty and income tax collections a month earlier, in April and May, respectively.

Another succour comes in the form of bringing forward by a month -- from April 1 to March 1 -- the introduction of higher limits on ways and means advances (which are like overdrafts taken in times of crisis). The increase ranges between 28 and 84 per cent for various states.

Bengal?s finance minister Asim Dasgupta said after a meeting of the sub-committee of the National Development Council that the Centre had also agreed to extend these advances free of interest for a year.

At the meeting, the Centre said it would set up a panel to suggest ways to improve the precarious financial health of the states which have run up huge deficits between expenditure and revenue. These gaps were being bridged with higher borrowings from the Centre.

West Bengal, for instance, has estimated a deficit of over Rs 7,000 crore for 1999-2000 and expects its debt burden to increase by as much as 30 per cent.

The panel, which will submit its report in eight weeks, will be headed by the planning secretary and will include the expenditure secretary and the state finance secretaries as members.

The panel will hold discussions with the various states to work out packages to nurse their finances back into robust health. This forms the second ? and longer-term ?part of the Centre?s strategy.

Finance secretary Vijay Kelkar said the meeting, chaired by finance minister Yashwant Sinha, and attended by Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot and finance ministers from West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and J& K, agreed that states? deficits have to be pruned to manageable levels over five years.

Sinha said widening deficits were not a problem of recent origin, though he admitted that ?salary hikes (of government staff) may have further worsened the situation. But the erosion in the health of our fiscal system began some time ago.?

Dasgupta said later that revenue expenditure of states was going up because of higher salaries and the rising interest component on loans. Eighty per cent of the loan liability of the states arose because of the burden imposed by the Centre, he said.

The prevailing opinion in the Congress is that RJD chief Laloo Yadav should be asked to make his wife step down, but party leaders are divided on the issue of ?enforcing morality and acceptability?.

?Morality and accountability are things which should come from within. We cannot ask someone to own up moral responsibility,? said Patil, who heads AICC?s media department. He said this was why the Congress did not demand President?s rule in Gujarat when Christians were attacked or in Maharashtra when 10 Dalits were killed in a police firing. ?We set the example in Orissa and now it is up to others to emulate,? he said.

A section of the party, however, feels that the leadership should make Rabri Devi?s exit a-condition for any understanding with the RJD. These leaders said Sonia Gandhi should have asked for a change of guard before bailing out Laloo Yadav.

The Congress Working Committee is divided on aligning with the RJD. While almost everyone endorsed Sonia Gandhi?s decision to oppose President?s rule, not more than half-a-dozen members wanted a poll deal with the RJD. But with less than six per cent of popular support, the Congress is in no position to contest alone in Bihar, a CWC member said.

Senior party leaders today admitted they faced a virtual revolt in the Bihar unit. Though, officially, they denied receiving the resignation of Bihar legislature party leader Ramashray Prasad Singh, Congress leaders said if the top brass did not act fast, the Bihar unit might split.

Sonia Gandhi today continued discussions with senior partymen and is likely to formulate a strategy by Monday.

In Mumbai, leader of the Opposition Sharad Pawar said the Congress opposed President?s rule in Bihar because it did not want misuse of Article 356. Making a distinction between Central rule and good governance, he said: ?Misuse of Article 356 and good governance are different. The Rabri Devi government must govern.?

Speaking at a press conference here, a Bihar-singed Advani today dodged questions on the imposition of President?s rule in the state, but slammed the Congress and the Left, blaming them for Rabri Devi?s return and the fresh violence in Jehanabad.

Washing his hands of the matter, he said his government would function only in accordance with the Constitution and correspond with the state on law and order. Central rule, he added, was no longer on the BJP?s agenda.

?We will function as the Constitution allows us to. What we did then was justified then,? the home minister said.

Dismissing the charge of Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Laloo Prasad Yadav that Central forces were withdrawn from Bihar, which gave a free hand to the marauders on Thursday night, Advani said: ?The home ministry has already given out the number of companies deployed in Bihar. There was no withdrawal of forces.? ?In fact,? he added, ?we are ready to give more forces, but as Vajpayee said, what is needed in Bihar is not more Central forces but the requisite political will.?

The home minister, who is in Kerala on a two-day visit to celebrate the first anniversary of the Vajpayee government?s rule, questioned the Congress? ?dual? attitude towards the RJD regime and added that the Opposition party?s ?irrational political hara-kiri? had put Rabri Devi back in saddle.

Mahajan said the government would soon enact a national programming and advertising code for Indian and foreign television companies. ?It would be mandatory for all channels to follow the guidelines,? he added.

The minister said he hoped to achieve two objectives by enforcing the code. First, Doordarshan would have a level playing field so far as attracting advertisement is concerned.

Second, ?cultural invasion of the country? would be stopped. He hinted that liquor and tobacco advertisements would be banned.

Denying that it was an attempt to pre-censor the programmes, Mahajan said: ?We are not going to stop anybody from beaming their programmes, but we only want them to follow broad guidelines.? He cited the example of Malaysia, saying the telecast of any foreign programme in that country was delayed by two minutes to enable censorship. Mahajan, however, hastened to add that ?we, being a democracy, will not do anything of the kind?.

The minister said the government would constitute a broadcast council with statutory powers to look into all complaints of violation of the code. ?Complaints of excessive sex or violence in programmes broadcast by Doordarshan can also be referred to the council,? he added.

Mahajan said the appointments of a chairman and a chief executive officer for the Prasar Bharati Board would be finalised soon, but made it clear that the panel could not assume all powers. ?Having invested Rs 1,000 crore in Doordarshan, the government cannot leave everything in the hands of seven wise men,? he said.

Mahajan said the concept of autonomy had changed from the time Doordarshan was the sole broadcaster and people now had several options for news and information.

He said a decision on allowing Indian-owned companies to uplink directly would be taken in the next fortnight, though already seven channels had taken up uplinking through VSNL. ?There is no proposal at the moment to give the same facility to foreign-owned companies,? the minister added.

Rattan, 41, who was a freelancer, had previously been associated with the UNI and the Hong Kong-based Asiaweek. He was also a top bridge player.

His body bore multiple stab injuries and had started decomposing when discovered, suggesting he had been murdered more than 24 hours ago.

The body was recovered by police from Rattan?s apartment in B.K. Dutt colony near the Safdarjung Airport, following an anonymous call. Police have not yet been able to identify the caller.

Police have interrogated Rattan?s neighbours and friends but no motive for the murder has yet been found. They are certain, however, that Rattan had been knifed to death more than 24 hours ago.

Today?s murder comes barely a week after the stabbed body of Irfan Hussain, cartoonist with the Outlook magazine, was found in a ditch in East Delhi after he had missing for five days. On January 23, Indian Express special correspondent Shivani Bhatnagar was found murdered in her east Delhi residence.

Journalists here are up in arms over the tardy progress of investigations by Delhi police.

After the murder of Hussain, furious journalists held a relay hungerstrike near the Press Club here and even heckled politicians when they came to offer their condolences. Trinamul Congress leader Mamata Banerjee was booed away by demonstrators.

The home ministry, however, said except for one of the cases, it was difficult to blame the ?deteriorating law-and-order situation in the capital?.

Initial investigations revealed that Rattan?s murder may be linked to a personal feud.

Even in Bhatnagar?s murder, the motive appears to have been personal enmity.

The police have, however, not established in any of these cases whether the victims paid a price for offending people through their articles or cartoons.

But a home ministry official agreed that since Shivani had been murdered in the third week of January, it was time the police solved the case.