Indian Pad News

The battle over UPA government’s survival moved into last lap with the ruling combine claiming that sizeable opposition abstentions will help it win the trust vote in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asserting that every decision of the coalition was in country’s interests.

The ruling combine and the opposition are almost equally poised in the House with an effective strength of 541 in the trust vote to be taken on Tuesday evening and the UPA managers are banking on nearly ten abstentions, all of them from NDA camp, and by Trinamool Congress leader Mamta Banerjee.

But the BJP dismissed all this as mischievous propaganda. The BJP as well as others against the confidence motion claimed that the opposition had a fair chance in the parliamentary battle.

Treasury bench managers claimed that they will win comfortably when the confidence motion moved by the prime minister is taken up for voting on Tuesaday evening. The margin of victory being bandied about by the ruling side is about six to seven votes above the required magic mark of 271.

Moving his one-line motion at the beginning of the two-day debate on the motion, a combative prime minister said the exercise of confidence was “wholly avoidable” and has come at a time when the government’s attention has been on the economy, particularly on control of inflation.

The ruling combine fielded External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, government’s pointsman on the Indo-US nuclear deal who shared a good rapport with the Left parties, put up a spirited defence of the government.

Keep your hand on your heart and say is this an issue on which you are bringing down the government Mukherjee said attacking the Communists for their decision to vote along with the BJP to defeat it.

Dont jump off the running train. Wait for the next station which the train is approaching to get off he told the left parties to avoid voting with the BJP.

The body language of the UPA in a packed Lok Sabha appeared confident and combative as Mukherjee claimed that the Congress-led alliance has the support of 276.

The ruling side hopes that some five abstentions–two each from BJP and JD-U and one from Shiv Sena– and some more from the rival camp not in a position to travel because of their ill-health would come to its aid in the vote that is exepcted to be a cliff-hanger.

However BJP Spokesman Vijay Kumar Malhotra described these claims as mischievous propaganda and said the NDA was intact.

He also dismissed in a similar vein reports that the BJP was lackadaisical in toppling the government on fears that BSP leader Mayawati may corner all the credit if the government fell.

NDA sources however onceded losses in the form of defection by BJP MP Brij Bhushan Saran Singh and the possible absence of Shiv Sena MP Tukaram Renge Patil who is said to be miffed with his party leadership. One more MP from Karnataka who is in ICU is a doubtful starter.

Commending the motion, the 75-year-old Prime Minister said “I assure the House and the country that every single decision, every policy initiative we have taken was in the fullest confidence that we are doing so in in the best interests of our people and our country.”

On the Indo-US nuclear deal, which has forced the confidence vote, he said he had repeatedly assured all political parties, including the Left, that if the government had been allowed to complete negotiations with the IAEA and NSG, he would have himself come to Parliament and sought its guidance before operationalising the deal.

He was surprised that the Left parties withdrew support when he was in Japan and so as soon as he returned he met the President and offered to submit himself to face Parliament at the earliest opportunity.

The two-day special session for the debate, which sometimes turned acrimonious, began in the shadow of mounting pressure from the CPI-M which directed Somnath Chatterjee to step down as Lok Sabha Speaker before the trust vote but he was defiant and presided over the House.

Leader of the Opposition, L K Advani, who was unsparing in his criticism of the government, said “if people vote NDA back to power, we will renegotiate the nuclear deal to make it equal and ensure that there are no constraints on our strategic autonomy.”

He said the deal has become an agreement between two individuals and was making India “subservient” and a junior partner.

A combative Mukherjee rejected the Left’s charge of “betrayal” saying the government decided to give the go-ahead to the IAEA to circulate the frozen text of the safeguards agreement among its Board of Directors after CPI(M) leader Prakash Karat announced that they were withdrawing support.

Responding to concerns over the applicability of the US Hyde Act on the 123 Agreement, he said “if anywhere it imposes conditionalities, that will be the breaking point”.

“We will never compromise India’s foreign policy,” he added.

Government side fielded four other ministers–T R Baalu, Praful Patel and Anand Sharma–who strongly defended the deal and the government. Ram Gopal Yadav, whose Samajwadi Party recently switched to the ruling camp, cautioned the Left parties about going with the BJP in toppling the government.

From the Opposition, the attack also came from Md Saleem of CPI(M), Gurudas Dasgupta (CPI), Shahnawaz Hussain (BJP), Anant Geete (Shiv Sena) and Bhartruhari Mahtab (BJD).

Salim accused the government of “outsourcing” foreign policy to the US and bluntly told the Congress that its coalition has lost trustworthiness due to its “deals”.

In a sarcastic vein, he said the government becomes fast when it comes to the nuclear deal and likened it to cricketers taking to performance-enhancing drugs.

He said the Left parties had not supported the government to go ahead with the nuclear deal and the strategic alliance with the US.