Tuesday, Apr 30, 2002
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By Neena Vyas
The Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, with George Fernandes, L.K.Advani , Jaswant Singh and Mamata Banerjee during the NDA meeting at the Parliament House on Monday. — Photo: V. Sudershan By Neena Vyas and K.V. Prasad
Mr. Paswan had sent in his resignation to the Prime Minister protesting against the failure of the Gujarat Government in controlling the communal violence and continuation of the State Chief Minister, Narendra Modi. Mr. Paswan's decision was conveyed to the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee's office through a resignation letter an hour before the NDA met for a strategy session ahead of the debate. Mr Vajpayee's office tried to get in touch with him but met with no success. Later, the resignation letter was forwarded to the President, who has accepted it. Although the Government admitted that it was caught off-guard by this development — the NDA convenor, George Fernandes, said this morning Mr Paswan's office had confirmed he would attend the evening NDA meeting — it was confident of defeating the Opposition-sponsored motion. Without getting into numbers, Mr. Fernandes said the "government majority was more than adequate (bharpoor bahumat rahegi).'' The Government has been able to get an assurance of "voting with the Government'' from the Trinamool, which would however speak in favour of Mr. Modi's ouster. The National Conference representative who attended the meeting preferred to maintain silence — its stand will be decided tomorrow, and indications are it could abstain. But all other allies of the NDA are expected to vote to defeat the Opposition-sponsored motion. Mr. Fernandes told reporters that all coalition partners had issued whips to their MPs asking them to be present and vote against the motion, but the Janata Dal (United) said it would be issuing the whip tomorrow. The BJP's calculation is that even without the Lok Janshakti and the TDP, the Government could notch up 285 votes with the help of the Bahujan Samaj Party. And this figure would be adequate as the AIADMK and some other parties could abstain, bringing down the number of votes needed to win to roughly 250. Earlier, addressing correspondents at his residence, Mr. Paswan said the continuing violence in Gujarat and the inability of the Centre to intervene had troubled his conscience. "The time had come to take a decision since the Lok Sabha discussion would end with voting tomorrow. It is not to score political points but to stand up and protect the minorities'', he said, adding "remaining neutral cannot be the answer". 
Ram Vilas Paswan
The Lok Janshakti, which has four MPs in the Lok Sabha, had resolved to vote against the Government at its Parliamentary Board meeting this morning. The party chief whip, Ram Chander Paswan, and senior vice-president, Ramvir Singh Bidhuri, announced this at a separate press conference. Mr. Paswan accused that even though the Prime Minister had made critical comments about the handling of the Gujarat situation during his visit there, the post-Goa posture of the BJP left few doubts. He spoke to the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, Chandrababu Naidu, twice today and had been in touch with the Trinamool Congress leader, Mamata Banerjee, and the J & K Chief Minister, Farooq Abdullah, over the Gujarat issue. Having decided to snap ties with the NDA, Mr. Paswan said the party would chart an independent course and not align with any other outfit or the People's Front. Mr. Paswan's move was also being seen in the context of his unhappiness over the BJP-BSP tie-up in Uttar Pradesh. The relations between Ms. Mayawati and Mr. Paswan are anything but cordial and the BJP's cosying up to the BSP created problems for the latter. It seems that the BSP was not willing to accommodate Mr. Paswan's party in the proposed coordination committee for the ruling coalition in Uttar Pradesh.
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