President wants LS to decide first

NEW DELHI, November 25: The Government will take at least a couple of weeks to go out of office, even if the ongoing efforts for a compromi...

NEW DELHI, November 25: The Government will take at least a couple of weeks to go out of office, even if the ongoing efforts for a compromise come to naught. President K R Narayanan is credited with the view that the fate of the Government should be sealed on the floor of the House. He has also conveyed his view to several political leaders that he will will come into the picture only if the Government is defeated in the Lok Sabha.

This can only mean that he will explore the options — of dissolution of the Lok Sabha, or the formation of an alternative arrangement, or the continuation of I K Gujral as caretaker Prime Minister — only after the Government is voted out on the floor of the Lok Sabha.

For this to happen, the Congress will have to move a no confidence motion against the Government or Gujral will have to seek a confidence vote — once the Congress decides to withdraw support. Either way it would entail a discussion on the Jain Commission in the House, which the Congress has been trying to avoid. This means a timetable of roughly two weeks.

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Technically speaking, the President can accept the Cabinet’s recommendation for dissolution as long as the government enjoys the confidence of the House. But with the Congress ultimatum that it will cease to support the UF unless the DMK Ministers are dropped, the situation is far from clear. In any case, the Cabinet is divided on the issue of dissolution which ties the Prime Minister’s hands.

There are four scenarios emerging now. One, a compromise between the Congress and the UF but either side has to back down for that to succeed. In that case Gujral could continue, may be for a few more months.

The Government has now mooted a new formula for the Congress’ consideration. It has offered to set up a Special Investigation Team(SIT) to probe M C Jain’s findings on the conspiracy angle as the Commission has not collected evidence. The Government’s suggestion is to treat the whole matter as sub judice and wait till the trial court in Chennai gives its judgement in the murder case which it is expected to do on January 18.

The UF is also learnt to have also offered to set up a committee to oversee the SIT. The committee could comprise politicians as well as a minister of the Government to act as an interface with the SIT. A SIT was constituted as a follow up to the Thakkar Commission report. For some reason, both Arjun Singh and Jitendra Prasada who lead the hawks in the Congress have been silent in the last 24 hours. They have not been publicly provoked by Kesri’s tactics to delay the despatch of a letter withdrawing support to the government. Either they are backing down or reformulating their strategy.

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The second scenario is that the Government is defeated on the floor of the House, following the withdrawal of support by the Congress. This would lead to Gujral’s resignation. It is here that the President could explore the possibility of an alternative arrangement.

The BJP is working overtime to split various parties. If the first timer MPs’ new formed forum to build up opinion against elections gathers momentum, the danger signals for the Congress would grow.