4 ex-PMs in search of a job, desperately

The four also want to broadbase their caucus by roping in another ex-PM and Congressman P V Narasimha Rao but were rebuffed for the second time today when he chose to stay away from their meeting. Gujral’s explanation for Rao’s absence was that he was not in town.

Singh, Gowda and Gujral also met Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee this evening to take up Singh’s latest cause — the sorry state of people living in the slum clusters in the Capital and that section of society which lives below the poverty line. Singh even earned for himself a great photo-op when he pitched his tent in a JJ cluster the other day and spent the night there.

Is there a political significance to this grand coming together of the foursome ? Are they trying to create a new political space for themselves by reviving the now-on and now-off Third Front ? “No, that’s not on our agenda. We are not forming any front or party. We all feel that we should express our views collectively on issues concerning the nation,” says Gujral.

“In a nation like ours, there are so many issues one of which Singh focussed on recently. Then there is the worsening law and order situation in Jammu and Kashmir, the general economic situation and social environment,” he explains.

The professions of innocence about their moves having political overtones notwithstanding, it is obvious that these former prime ministers are making a serious bid to recapture their lost political relevance.

Singh, who fashioned himself as the “Mandal messiah” has stayed away from electoral politics for a long time now while Chandra Shekhar heads virtually a one-man party, the Samajwadi Janata Party. Shekhar is the only among the four who has made it to the Lok Sabha, though by way of generosity from Mulayam Singh Yadav. The entire Gowda family including himself lost the recent elections and is now smarting under the blow of a split in his Janata Dal (Secular). Six of his 10 MLAs in the Karnataka Assembly joined the Congress. And Gujral has been a nowhere man, failing to find a constituency for himself with the Akali Dal refusing him the nomination they gave him in 1998 to contest from Jalandhar.