Sonia basks in Opp unity

Meeting for the first time at Sonia’s residence, 20 opposition leaders (five of them representing the Congress) from 12 parties decided to have full floor coordination in both houses of Parliament and unitedly highlight issues, including Ayodhya, the ‘‘untenable situation’’ in Uttar Pradesh, the JPC report on the UTI scam and the drought situation in major parts of the country.

According to Reddy, who officially briefed the press, the one-and-a-half-hour meeting that preceded the dinner did not work out the exact timing and manner in which these issues would be highlighted. Asked specifically whether an adjorument motion on Ayodhya would be brought before or after the SC hearing on February 21, Reddy refused to give a categorical reply.

He also revealed that there had been suggestions ‘‘for cooperation’’ beyond Parliament but for the moment the focus was on coordination within the House. The indication was that if this worked out satisfactorily, the process of cooperation outside the House would also get a fillip.

Today’s meeting is significant because it represents a coming of age of sorts for Congress chief Sonia Gandhi. Though Sonia has been the Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha, she had not fulfilled this role with the same authority before. Meetings on floor coordination in Parliament are nothing new — CPI(M) leader Somnath Chatterjee hosted these dinners — but opposition parties had refused to attend even Sonia’s tea parties at one time.

Tonight every invitee on the guest list turned up, some of them coming in pairs and others on their own. The pairs included Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh (SP), Laloo Prasad Yadav and Raghuvansh Prasad Singh (RJD), G M Banatwala and E.Ahmad (Muslim League), and old friends Chandra Shekhar and Sharad Pawar (SJP and NCP, respectively.) The leaders who drove in solo were Ram Vilas Paswan (Lok Janshakti), Ajay Chakraborty (CPI), Prakash Ambedkar (RPI), Ramdas Athavle (RPI-Athavle), Somnath Chatterjee (CPI-M) and last former prime minister H D Deve Gowda. Apart from Sonia, the Congress was repsented by Manmohan Singh, Shivraj Patil, Priya Ranjan Das Munshi and Jaipal Reddy.

Sonia did not participate in the discussions herself but played the role of a ‘‘facilitator’’. According to Reddy, she ‘‘thanked everybody for responding to her invitation’’ and made only ‘‘introductory observations, primarily related to floor coordination.’’ Following that, ‘‘everyone who came spoke.’’

On the issue of cooperation beyond floor coordination, Reddy refused to identify the leaders who made the suggestion but maintained ‘‘no specific’’ ideas had been discussed. However, Samajwadi Party leaders did raise the situation in UP and the need to take on the BSP-BJP alliance in the state.

Tonight’s meeting was clearly an effort to project an image of ‘‘secular opposition unity’’ in Parliament but much will depend on how the nitty-gritty is worked out. For instance, the Left parties following their own meeting this evening decided to press for a joint parliamentary resolution against the unilateral move by the US to go to war with Iraq. They also decided to highlight their opposition to the Government’s proposed ‘‘labour reforms’’.

The meeting at Sonia Gandhi’s residence, however, did not lay emphasis on either of these issues.