If the Trinamool Congress can manage the requisite numbers to ensure that the proposed no-confidence motion is admitted in Parliament, then the Communist Party of India (CPI) will vote in favour of the motion, senior CPI leader Gurudas Dasgupta said here on Sunday.
“The Trinamool Congress has announced that it will bring a no-confidence motion against the government in Parliament. If it manages to ensure the support of 50 MPs that will be required to ensure that the motion is admitted, then we will not have the responsibility of saving this government,” Mr. Dasgupta told journalists.
Mr. Dasgupta said that it was the responsibility of the party that moves the resolution to ensure the numbers to get it admitted, but he saw “noting wrong” the Trinamool Congress’s decision.
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“If the motion is admitted, neither shall we walk out of the Parliament nor shall we abstain from voting. The Centre is responsible for many injustices and crimes against the people. It deserves severe punishment, which shall either be handed to it by the people a year-and-a-half from now in the general elections or during the no-confidence motion in Parliament,” he said.
Although Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee is a bitter political rival, Mr. Dasgupta said that no party in Parliament is “untouchable.” He even clarified that the CPI will vote against the government even if it is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which comes to the aid of the Trinamool Congress in ensuring that the no-confidence motion is admitted.
However, Mr. Dasgupta did express his reservations about the chances of a no-confidence motion brought against the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government being successful.
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“The Congress has vast resources and will be able to buy off MPs to ensure that it wins the no-confidence motion. This is why there is a need for an intervention by the civil society to change the policies of this government,” said Mr. Dasgupta appealing to the Trinamool Congress to support the two-day general strike across the country called by central trade unions in February next year.
On being asked to comment on remarks made by the CPI general secretary S. Sudhakar Reddy last month that if a no-confidence motion fails, the Congress may claim that Parliament has endorsed its decision on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in multi brand retail, Mr. Dasgupta said that it was not so.
“If any resolution falls, the reverse is not true. But I do believe that the main discussion should not be on the issue of FDI, but on the economic crisis in the country,” he said.