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Journalism of Courage
NEW DELHI, April 21: Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav made a last-ditch attempt to stall the formation of a Sonia-led minority government by floating the name of West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu as an alternative Prime Minister.
But his ploy failed after Basu himself, the CPM and the Congress rejected his proposal outright, leaving him with only two options: To come around to accepting Sonia Gandhi or face a mid-term poll.
Earlier, at a two-hour meeting of Opposition leaders held at Mulayam’s initiative, AIADMK leader J Jayalalitha and RJD chief Laloo Prasad Yadav were deputed to meet Congress president Sonia Gandhi and convey to her the proposal to field Basu for premiership.
Though Mulayam’s aide Amar Singh told reporters that the Basu proposal was a consensus decision, an hour later Laloo rubbished the claim of a consensus. “No decision has been taken in this regard,” he said. He even said that a lot of precious time had been wasted and now “it is time for us to sit down and take adecision fast.”
The two contradictory statements brought into the open the differences in the so-called joint approach of the Rashtriya Loktantrik Morcha of Laloo and Mulayam. Laloo had a separate meeting with CPI(M) general secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet.
Adding to the Opposition’s woes was the outright rejection of the proposal by the CPI(M) and the CPI and by Basu himself. In fact, Surjeet who has been pushing for a minority Congress government supported from the outside by the other secular parties even threatened to walk out of the meeting over the Basu proposal. A serious-looking Basu who yesterday claimed that he was not a candidate for premiership and even conveyed his unwillingness to Sonia Gandhi, refused to talk to waiting reporters.
There is also a view that the proposal to float Basu’s name for prime ministership is a ploy to placate the trenchant critics of the Congress, the RSP and Forward Bloc who between them have seven Lok Sabha members, a number which could make or break analternative government. Now that Basu himself has rejected the move, it is being said that the two parties would be forced to fall in line and in the end support a Congress government.
All the leaders stuck to the respective stands of their parties with the SP, RSP represented by Abani Roy and the Forward Bloc by Debabrata Biswas ruling out support to a Congress government.
Surjeet’s CPI counterpart A B Bardhan also attended the meeting, apart from three former prime ministers Chandra Shekhar, H D Deve Gowda and I K Gujral.Mulayam had earlier in the day told Lok Shakti chief Ramakrishna Hegde who spoke to him on the telephone that there was no question of his party supporting the Congress. Demanding a “common minimum programme” from the Congress, he said a new government would have to clarify its stand on communalism, social justice, economic and agriculture policies, besides matters like the Women’s Reservation Bill, Patents Law and Article 370. He also deputed Amar Singh to President K R Narayananwith a letter saying that the SP was yet to decide on backing a Congress government.
