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Journalism of Courage
NEW DELHI/CHENNAI, Feb 3: Fresh trouble erupted at the Centre today with AIADMK chief J Jayalalitha refusing to sign a joint statement of the coalition constituents and threatening to withdraw support to the Vajpayee government by saying that the issue of support was “open” and “an appropriate decision will be taken at an appropriate time”.
Now it falls upon Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and convenor of the coordination committee of the ruling alliance, George Fernandes, to make a fresh attempt to placate the AIADMK chief.
BJP spokesman, Krishna Lal Sharma, said that Vajpayee and Fernandes, as well as other senior members of the coordination committee, “would use their good offices to persuade the AIADMK leader” to sign the joint statement prepared at the coordination committee meeting yesterday.
A section of the BJP leaders claim that the joint statement was the Prime Minister’s ploy to rope in all allies and stop them from speaking in different voices.
Parties which refused to sign thestatement therefore indicated that they were not interested in running this Government, a senior BJP leader said.The BJP wants to escape the blame for the fall of the Government, whenever it happens. “We will be able to say that so and so party was never interested in the smooth running of the Government which is why it did not sign the joint statement pledging solidarity,” the BJP leader claimed.Earlier in Chennai today, an adamant Jayalalitha claimed that she was not happy with the government’s functioning. A day after the coalitions partners issued the joint statement not to openly voice their differences and attack the government, Jayalalitha told reporters: “I am not going to sign it.”Claiming that the Vajpayee government was taking unilateral decisions on important policy matters, Jayalaitha threatened to withdraw support: “An appropriate decision would be taken at the appropriate time,” she said. There were many points in the joint statement with which her party was not in agreement, shesaid.
Since she had no advance knowledge about the statement, Union Law Minister Thambidurai, who represented the AIADMK at the coordination committee meeting, was not authorised to sign the document, she explained. The BJP tried to make light of Jayalalitha’s refusal by claiming that since the AIADMK was the only party to differ, there was no threat to the government.“The Telugu Desam Party has softened by giving up its threat to withdraw support after the partial rollback of PDS prices. There is no problem to the government from the Trinamool Congress either,” K L Sharma claimed.
Sharma termed Mamata Banerjee’s statement about her party going it alone in the elections as “irrelevant” as there were no elections in West Bengal in the near future.
