In an interview that will create considerable controversy and provoke the wrath of BJP supporters, the author of a recent study of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani has claimed that in 1998, when he was 33 and a young MLA, Home Minister Amit Shah was critical of prime minister Vajpayee’s nuclear tests. Vinay Sitapati, the author of ‘Jugalbandi’, an account of the Vajpayee-Advani relationship and who teaches at Ashoka University, claims that in 1998 Amit Shah wrote to prime minister Vajpayee sharply criticizing the nuclear tests. In his alleged letter, he wrote: “Respected Vajpayee Ji, because of your greed for publicity you have forever lost Pakistan Occupied Kashmir”. Sitapati adds that when Vajpayee summoned him to Delhi for an explanation Shah told him that Morarji Desai had told him: “if we both (India and Pakistan) become nuclear powers, we can never win back PoK through the war”.
