More talk. Less walk

Some Congresspersons complain that Amar Singh talked more and delivered less in the crucial confidence vote.

Some Congresspersons complain that Amar Singh talked more and delivered less in the crucial confidence vote. When he joined the UPA, he claimed that he would provide 39 MPs from his party and he would poach another half-a-dozen. However, when it came to the crunch, the SP8217;s effective contribution was only 32 MPs. Six SP MPs defected to Mayawati and two others, Beni Prasad Verma and Raj Babbar, were already in the Congress camp. The only Opposition MP that the SP managed to bring around was UP BJP MP Brij Bhushan Singh. Nevertheless the SP put out full-page advertisements in Delhi newspapers hailing Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh for their efforts for the nuclear deal.

The unsung heroes in the vote were actually the UPA chief ministers, Andhra Pradesh8217;s Y Rajasekhar Reddy, Maharahstra8217;s Vilasrao Deshmukh and Jharkhand8217;s Madhu Koda. The last played his cards well in roping in the five JMM MPs, which at one stage would have tilted the balance. The slippery Shibu Soren was being wooed by the BJP with the promise of chief ministership and a senior BJP leader even flew to Kolkata to meet him. However, Koda in the meantime worked on three JMM MPs and secured their support. A disgruntled Soren had no alternative but to go along with them. The BJP wanted a package deal, not just Soren.

However, Deve Gowda8217;s JDU slipped out of the UPA fold because the Congress could not meet his main demand that the Yeddyurappa government in Karnataka should be dismissed.

Left on his own

After the Polit bureau meeting expelling Somnath Chatterjee, the CPIM members quietly slipped out and left their allies from the Forward Block and RSP to speak to the media. In Stalinistic style the Communists started vilifying their former comrade. The Speaker was criticised for being a bourgeois capitalist and a pseudo Communist. They even raked up the fact that his father was an RSS man.

Coincidentally, along with Chatterjee8217;s fall from grace within his party, his OSD and once hyperactive media adviser, Prasanna Kumar, who is close to the CPIM, has been missing in action. Kumar has been in and out of hospital because of a hearing ailment. Chatterjee8217;s first press statement after his expulsion was issued by his additional private secretary and not his media adviser.

Hospitality ban

Some BJP MPs, who had made a deal with the UPA to abstain during the vote, thought they could hoodwink their own party by pleading illness. They reckoned without the party vigilantes. Receiving a tip off that a BJP MP wanted to book himself into a Delhi hospital for an operation, for which there was no necessity, the party authorities warned the MP not to go in for medical treatment at this point. All the same the MP did not show up in Parliament for the vote.

A Mumbai hospital where a BJP MP had a bypass surgery refused to release him after several days on the grounds that there was fluid in his lungs. Since his medical report showed that the water was within permissible levels, the party ordered the hospital to release him or face a malpractice suit. Another BJP MP admitted himself into hospital for food poisoning during the confidence vote.

Allied problems

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BJP leader L K Advani was indulgent towards only one interjection in his speech during the confidence vote. He promptly sat down when Transport Minister T R Baalu got up to heckle him over the Ram Sethu issue. Advani believes that every time Baalu opens his mouth on the Ram issue he advances the BJP8217;s cause. When Baalu got up to speak, Sonia Gandhi looked grim and both Parliamentary Affair Minister Vayalar Ravi and Leader of the House Pranab Mukherjee rushed towards him to ask him to sit. Baalu refused to yield and pushed Ravi aside. A fellow DMK minister looked extremely embarrassed at the goings on.

Mushkeel hogi

Unlike the SP MPs, none of the Congress speakers in Parliament were particularly harsh on the Left. They were conscious that after the next polls they may per force have to seek the Communists8217; support once again. Laloo Prasad Yadav in his earthy speech quoted the couplet, 8220;tum mujhe na chaho to koi baat nahin, lekein tum kisi aur ko chahogee to mushkeel hogi8221;. The problem is that the Left is already eyeing Mayawati as the next politician to prop up!