BJP hardliners gang up against reforms

Her vociferous opposition to the Insurance Bill drew applause from many of her colleagues, angeringthe PM to snap at her for her rude tone. Bharati retorted that she would change her tone but not her remarks.

Bharati and the MP from Mirzapur, Virendra Singh (whose residence houses an office of the SJM), both argued that the BJP would have no credibility left if it sponsored a Bill which it had opposed only last year. “We came to power on a swadeshi agenda,” Singh exclaimed. “The Government’s decision sends a clear message that we have buckled under pressure from foreign companies.”

Hurt by the accusations hurled at him, Vajpayee is understood to have hinted that he was prepared to quit if his colleagues doubted his intentions. He told them the decisions taken by the Government were for the benefit of the country and they were the collective responsibility of the Cabinet.

But after this morning’s stormy meeting, it was clear that the PM would find it difficult to get his own party to support the IRA Bill, let alone Parliament where the Government has a wafer thin majority.

The PMO is nowsearching for a face-saver. According to indications available today, the Government may table the Bill towards the end of the session and allow it to go into cold storage on one pretext or another, which is what has happened to the Women’s Reservation Bill.

The first signal of the Government’s retreat came from Parliamentary Affairs Minister Madan Lal Khurana who let the cat out of the bag by stating at a press conference in the morning that the IRA Bill was not a priority.

Embarrassed by the impact of this admission on the ongoing World Economic Forum Meet and the sudden drop in the Sensex, the PMO ordered Khurana to do some damage control. In the afternoon, the Minister issued a clarification’ to say that the Bill was not on the first list but would be included in “a second list”.

Prime Ministerial aides maintained that the Finance Ministry was still giving finishing touches to the Bill which is why it could only be introduced around mid-December. But Finance Ministry officials countered bypointing out that the Bill was virtually the same as the one drafted by former Finance Minister P Chidambaram and therefore needed only minor changes.

For Vajpayee, the BJP’s electoral rout is turning out to be a personal defeat. With price rise being identified as the main cause of the BJP’s humiliation, the mood in the party on the PM’s economic agenda has turned ugly. This may force him to slow down the pace of reforms which he was trying to accelerate in the past few weeks.

On Sunday, his economic decisions were attacked in two separate meetings. At one such meet, BJP president Kushabhau Thakre accused him of bypassing the party and warned him not to overturn the party’s agenda on the plea that there were compulsions of governance.

The first public show of anger at Vajpayee’s economic blueprint came yesterday when the Sangh trade union, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, demonstrated outside Parliament against the Insurance Bill. On December 3, the Swadeshi Jagran Manch is slated to sit on dharna on the sameissue and SJM’s organising secretary Murlidhar Rao warned today that the Manch was ready to take the Government head-on unless it reversed its decision.