ELECTIONS '98
COMMENTARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ARCHIVES

Congress will not try to pull down BJP before November polls

Former Lok Sabha speaker and Congress Working Committee member Purno Agitok Sangma has said his party is not interested at the moment in forming a government as it is busy preparing for assembly elections in four states.

Sangma said the results of the elections would give an indication of the people's mood, and the party would review the political scenario thereafter.

On forming a government at the Centre after the elections, Sangma said the Congress does not visualise forming a government at the Centre "until we are able to bring back Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to our fold". Till that time, the Congress may have to make some adjustments with other political parties.

But the Congress will not make any adjustment with any party at the cost of its ideology, programmes, and priorities as outlined in the Pachmarhi declaration, he added.

On the view of some political observers that the Congress is providing breathing space to the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, Sangma said this was not so. The Bharatiya Janata Party has reached its peak and is bound to decline from now onwards, he said.

Sangma said the BJP has no experience of governance at the national level, and even its allies have experience of governance only at the state level. Moreover, the ruling party's allies are more concerned about their respective states than the country as a whole. For example, he said, Naveen Patnaik, Mamta Banerjee, and Chandrababu Naidu are seeking packages for their states.

"But more importantly," the BJP government at the Centre will collapse not because of its allies but because of the contradications within the BJP and the Sangh Parivar.

Sangma said, "Mr L K Advani has assumed the role of a real Opposition leader because in a parliamentary democracy the Opposition leader is perceived to be the next prime minister."

He was confident that the people would not give the BJP another chance because the party had failed on all fronts.

On the line of thought that if Vajpayee is given a majority he will perform better, Sangma quipped, "He would have been in more trouble had he got an absolute majority." The government would not have lasted even "this much", he argued. Vajpayee would have been completely dictated to by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Now the prime minister at least has the convenient excuse that he is hamstrung by the demands of his allies.

UNI

Tell us what you think of this report