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Tara Shankar Sahay in New Delhi
Samata Party Lok Sabha Member of Parliament from the Maharajganj constituency (Bihar), Prabhunath Singh, has not expressed regret over his demand that Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee resign over the petrol pump allotment scam.
"No, he (Prabhunath Singh) has stuck to his stand that the prime minister should resign over the petrol pump allotments. After all, by cancelling these allotments, the prime minister has acknowledged that there is a scam," his aide Umesh Singh told rediff.com when contacted at the MP's 2 Talkatora Road residence.
He said that the MP had given his reply on Thursday itself when the party leadership asked him to explain his stand.
"There are several other issues, which he has raised in his explanation. So there should not be any ambiguity about Prabhunathji's stand," the aide said.
Samata Party sources underscored that there was little possibility of Singh being expelled from the party.
"In normal times, his (Prabhunath's) goose would have been cooked. But with various crises besieging the prime minister and his National Democratic Alliance government, the leadership's emphasis is on maintaining its unity than look for confrontation," one Lok Sabha party MP pointed out.
Singh, widely considered a gadfly in NDA circles, is among a few Samata MPs whose wish to find a ministerial berth in the central government has remained unfulfilled.
His periodic ranting against the government in the House has caused amusement in the opposition ranks, while triggering dismay in the ruling combine.
Party sources pointed out there was a tug of war between George Fernandes, the defence minister, and Railways Minister Nitish Kumar.
They emphasised that the rift between these two senior leaders had provided their party colleagues an opportunity to vent their spleen on some issues.
They also pointed out that Prabhunath Singh could be used as a 'willing pawn' in the Fernandes-Kumar face-off within the Samata.
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