United Front decides against dissolution of Lok Sabha
The United Front late on Sunday night decided against
dissolution of the Lok Sabha as and when the Congress withdrew
support to the Gujral government.
UF sources had told Rediff On The NeT on Sunday evening that
the prime minister would not reply to Congress president Sitaram Kesri and
would instead meet the President on Monday morning and recommend dissolution of the House.
However, the UF core committee met for over two hours and discussed
at length the Left parties's demand for
dissolution of the Lok Sabha. In the end, the committee shot down the demand on the ground that it
could pave the way for a split in the Congress and facilitate the Bharatiya
Janata Party's gameplan to form an alternate government by
engineering defections.
It was also decided that Prime Minister I K Gujral would formally convey the Front's decision to the Congress, rejecting that party's demand for dropping the DMK ministers from the Union council of ministers.
Front convener N Chandrababu Naidu was among those who opposed
the dissolution of the Lok Sabha; the Andhra Pradesh chief minister said it
would only help the BJP to form a government at the Centre.
Congress president Sitaram Kesri had communicated to Gujral
that his party would withdraw support to the Front government if it
did not drop the DMK ministers whose party was indicted by the
Jain Commission which probed the conspiracy behind Rajiv Gandhi's
assassination.
Though the letter was drafted on Friday, Gujral did not send it to Kesri, in the vain hope that a compromise could be reached and a way found out of the impasse.
Briefing the media after the meeting which
concluded well past midnight, UF spokesperson S Jaipal Reddy said
the Front favoured a discussion on the Jain Commission report.
The UF core committee will meet again this morning to consider
the fallout of the Congress's reactions, both inside and outside
Parliament.
Reddy said informal talks between the Congress and the Front are
on at various levels. Railway Minister Ram Vilas Paswan and Minister of State for External Affairs Kamala Sinha met Kesri yesterday. "We are trying to keep communal forces away and the nation intact," Paswan told the media when he left Kesri's home.
The Congress Crisis, November 1997
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