Goa rebels made impossible terms — Scindia

“These were not reasonable demands but blackmail and as such they were unacceptable to the party high command,” he said, adding that not even once did these rebel MLAs express any wish to meet party president Sonia Gandhi on the issue of change of leadership in the state.

Scindia was speaking at a “Meet the Press” programme, organised by the Press Club of India here.

Defending the appointment of Faleiro as Chief Minister when the government was formed in June this year, Scindia said he(Faleiro) was made CLP leader since he had the backing of more than two-thirds of the MLAs at that time.

Only one MLA had backed Sardinha’s claim then, he added. Blaming the opportunistic politics of the BJP for the ouster of the Congress government in Goa, Scindia said the honeymoon between the breakaway group and the BJP would not last long. “Right now, it is a period of honeymoon when neither the bride nor bridegroom can do any wrong. It cannot last long. The glaring example of political immorality will soon come to the fore,” he said.

On the party’s approach to the governments’s economic agenda to be brought up in the coming session of Parliament, Scindia said his party would offer its support but only when it was satisfied that the conditions it had listed in its election manifesto were fulfilled.

On the issue of coalitions on which there has been an intense debate within the party, Scindia said the Pachmarhi resolution (which said the party should go it alone) has been misunderstood. “Inprinciple, the party believes in going it alone. But as we are passing through a transitional phase…as an exception, it has not ruled out coalitions,” he said. He gave the example of Maharashtra where the party went in for a coalition as the mandate was strongly in favour of secular and progressive forces.

When asked about his views on the recent turmoil within the party in his home state, Madhya Pradesh, Scindia said that while the issues raised by Subhash Yadav were serious, he should have discussed them within the party forum.

“Yadav is a senior leader of the state and has held responsible positions. The issues concerning farmers that he has raised are mainly related to the policies of the Central Government. It would have been more appropriate if he had talked to the Chief Minister and raised the issues in the party forum instead of coming on the streets,” he felt.

He also reiterated his party’s demand that the Centre should officially declare the cyclone in Orissa a national calamity ratherthan simply treat it as one. “I don’t understand the hitch…provisions to that effect are contained in the report of the Tenth Finance Commission,” he observed.

Scindia, who is also the deputy leader of the party in the Lok Sabha, was of the view that the BJP-led coalition would not last long as the basic ideology of the BJP and its allies were “totally contradictory.”