NEW DELHI, Dec 1: Amid growing reports that the Congress is in danger of splitting, the party leadership today asked President KR Narayanan to invite them to form a Government and prove majority on the floor of the House. The request came tonight in a meeting between the President and seven top Congress leaders at Rashtrapati Bhavan. The request was made on the basis of two points: That all other political formations in the Lok Sabha had been given a similar chance, and that majority should be proved by ``credible methods''.The second point is important as it comes in the midst of a flurry of activity led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP is hopeful of getting about 50 Congress MPs to their side by tomorrow and the Congress is in a desperate rush to prevent this. Though party president Sitaram Kesri managed to orchestrate a signed statement by 17 party MPs that no one will go to the BJP, this is not being taken seriously.The other problem the party is facing is who will lead the Government which it wants to form. A Kesri-led Government is not likely to get support from the UF which is mandatory for it to survive in a vote of confidence. Among the names floating are those of Lok Sabha Speaker PA Sangma, Congress Working Congress (CWC) member Madhavrao Scindia and former Finance Minister Manmohan Singh. There are as yet no indications though of any of these actually being the consensus candidate as of today.The desperation has now set in and the race is to beat the BJP by tomorrow. Any one of the three possibilities is likely over the next two days. Either the Congress and the UF find a consensus candidate to head a new Government or the BJP splits the Congress and forms its Government or the President dissolves the House. Kesri is hoping the threat of the BJP getting into 7, Race Course Road, will bring the Left around.The Congress is also hoping to bring the TMC, SP, BSP, Cong (T) and some Independents around by tomorrow. The RJD has already assured support and the Congress is keen to get the others to follow. This will enable it to beat the BJP in numbers initially and give some credence to the Congress claim.A worried Congress, therefore, focussed on the BJP's attempts to engineer defections and form a Government. ``The BJP is the James Bond of Indian politics. It wants a licence to kill democracy,'' party spokesperson VN Gadgil said. The party stressed this point with Narayanan also.With Kesri at Rashtrapati Bhavan were Pranab Mukherjee, Sharad Pawar, Arjun Singh, JB Patnaik, Jitendra Prasada and Vijaya Bhaskara Reddy. All of them stressed that giving time would amount to allowing horse-trading.While the CWC met twice at Kesri's house today, MPs were meeting in Parliament's Central Hall and elsewhere. Speculation is that till tonight, rebel Congressmen had managed 38 MPs. Seventeen MPs, however, issued a signed statement saying they would not go to the BJP.They included Rajesh Pilot, Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi, Suresh Kalmadi, BS Hooda, Narendra Budhania, Sona Ram, Sontosh Mohan Dev, PC Chacko, Ashok Gehlot, Satish Sharma, Pradeep Kumar Dev and Mrutyujay Nayak.``No Congress MP having any human qualities and political conscience in him can consider the tragic assassination of Rajiv Gandhi a trivial issue.
