Finale: Cabinet recommends dissolution

However, indications were that a special session is unlikely. Union Law Minister Ramakant Khalap told reporters that such a session was not required to transact any financial business. This view was shared by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as well.

After the President dissolves the Lok Sabha, the Election Commission (EC) will draft a schedule for the elections.

The final turn in the three-week drama came after last-minute talks, since last night, between the United Front (UF) and the Congress failed to resolve the crisis.

With the BJP also failing in its desperate attempt to engineer defections, there was very little option but to recommend dissolution. To save its face, the BJP called on the President before the Cabinet met to say it wanted dissolution of the House and was not encouraging defections.

The Congress is now faced with the embarrassment of explaining why it couldn’t handle the crisis after having precipitated it in the first place. Kesri pleaded till the end with caretaker Prime Minister IK Gujral but the UF was in no mood to comply.

Kesri drafted more than half the Congress Working Committee (CWC) in a desperate bid to salvage the situation but a resolute Left led the final negative from the UF. A frantic Congress swung from a rigid stance to one of near-compliance, but it failed. “We sacrificed our Government to be with the DMK. The Congress proposal was therefore unacceptable to us,” a top Left leader said on condition of anonymity.

Sharad Pawar, Madhavrao Scindia, Arjun Singh, Jitendra Prasada held parleys with Harkishan Singh Surjeet, Chandrababu Naidu, GK Moopanar, Murasoli Maran and the rest of the UF leadership, while Kesri spoke to Gujral. The Congress proposal reflected its frustration at not being able to handle the crisis well. It had three stages: The UF would first write to the President saying that since a majority of MPs don’t want dissolution of the House, the Congress should reconsider its stance. The Congress was to reciprocate then in its communique to Narayanan saying it had reconsidered its stand as elections were bad for the nation’s economy.

Once this was done, Gujral was to be sworn in as Prime Minister again with not more than 10 Ministers to keep the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and many other UF constituents out of the Cabinet initially. The Council of Ministers was to be expanded after a fortnight, according to the Congress formula. But the Left stuck to its guns and said no firmly. Surjeet sent Scindia and Arjun Singh back empty-handed and the tidings were conveyed to Kesri last night. Following this, Kesri spoke to Gujral but had embarrassing news to convey to his colleagues.

Late this evening, Kesri was summoned by the President to be told formally that the House would be dissolved. Kesri, in turn, conveyed the failure of the Congress attempts to resolve the crisis it had precipitated in the first place.

The Congress gamble has thus failed. Kesri has been hoisted on his own petard. The party was anyway nervous at the prospect of facing a midterm election but now it has the chilling prospect of having to go through with it. In public, Congress leaders were putting up a brave face: “We made our attempts to stall elections but the UF’s response was not encouraging. We have fought many elections and are not afraid of them now,” said Sharad Pawar.

However, Kesri is likely to be in control at least till the next Lok Sabha is constituted.