Laloo, Mulayam fail to persuade Deve Gowda to quit
Tara Shankar Sahay in New Delhi
United Front leaders Mulayam Singh Yadav
and Laloo Prasad Yadav on Thursday night made an abortive attempt to
persuade Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda to step
aside for one of the ruling combine's senior leaders and thus
prevent the vote of confidence.
According to Samajwadi Party officials,
Mulayam Singh and Laloo Yadav approached the prime minister
on their own initiative although they were the most vocal about Deve
Gowda's continuance in office. The two leaders approached
the prime minister after Deve Gowda's dinner
for UF MPs.
Mulayam Singh and Laloo Yadav
impressed upon Deve Gowda that such a selfless gesture --
making way for another UF colleague -- would not only
prevent the Bharatiya Janata Party from coming to power,
but also project the image
that the coalition government was not to be easily dislodged.
Deve Gowda told the two Yadavs that while he
appreciated their appeal, stepping aside for anybody else would
be self-defeating for himself and the ruling coalition.
The prime minister said it would be best to take the harder option
and face a vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha.
Undeterred by the prime minister's response,
Mulayam Singh and Laloo Yadav went to Union Home Minister
Indrajit Gupta and appealed to him to make the prime minister
change his mind. But Gupta refused and pointed out that
his party's (the CPI) national executive had
just endorsed the United Front stand of facing the
vote of confidence.
The UF's earlier confidence about the vote in Parliament was
undermined by the fact that few Congress MPs were willing to
defy the leadership's whip to vote against the Deve Gowda government.
Congress president Sitaram Kesri let
it be known that anybody defying the party whip would
not only be pulled up, but "exposed."
This threat apparently worked and
even Kesri's bitter rival, former prime minister P V Narasimha
Rao, told his supporters that they should not defy the whip.
What happened before the Lok Sabha met on Friday morning
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