UF bid to keep Gujral afloat

NEW DELHI, Nov 30: Convinced that no political formation was in a position to form the Government at the Centre, the United Front was busy ...

NEW DELHI, Nov 30: Convinced that no political formation was in a position to form the Government at the Centre, the United Front was busy making efforts to ensure that I K Gujral remained the caretaker Prime Minister until the mid-term polls.

The 13-party coalition is likely to hold a steering committee meeting tomorrow afternoon before leaving for Rashtrapati Bhavan to meet President K R Narayanan. Front convenor N Chandrababu Naidu is likely to arrive here tomorrow morning to take charge of these informal discussions.

On a day

which saw very little political activity, leaders of the United Front appeared confident of having thwarted all attempts to drive a wedge in their ranks. Most of the senior leaders were out of the Capital to keep up with their official engagements.

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Despite their official position, the TMC and the Samajwadi Party continue to give jitters to the UF with their stand.

In an interview to a private network, its senior leader Peter Alphons today said: “We don’t mind whether the DMK is outside or inside the Government. Our attempt is to give the nation a stable Government.”

Speaking to reporters at Purnea in Bihar, SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav on Saturday asserted that his party was ready to go to any extent to thwart the BJP bid to form Government at the Centre.

Congress general secretary Madhavrao Scindia reportedly met CPI (M) general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet in an effort to seek his party’s help in propping up a new UF-led Government at the Centre, but was said to have returned disappointed.

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Front spokesman S Jaipal Reddy today reiterated the coalition’s position that it would not succumb to the “unhealthy pressure” being exerted by the Congress to drop the DMK in the wake of the Jain Commission report.“We resigned gracefully because our Government was dependent on the Congress support and chose to keep national interest above everything else,” he said.

He asserted that the Front was not willing to be privy to a process of alienation of a major ethnic community or estrangement of a major political party on the pretext of “unsubstantiated indictment” of the DMK by the Jain Commission.

He felt that the Jain Commission was merely a pretext used by the Congress to pull down the United Front Government.