COMMENTARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Congress to stake claim if government falls

The Congress today declared that it would stake its claim to form an alternative government after the fall of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, with an agreed programme among the constituents of its coalition.

Addressing a crowded press conference, spokesman Arjun Singh asserted that the confidence motion moved by Prime Minister Vajpayee would be defeated in the Lok Sabha despite the volte-face by Indian National Lok Dal leader Om Prakash Chautala.

Singh said the parties supporting the Congress have made it clear that an alternative government will be in place moments after the BJP-led coalition falls.

He dismissed the "disinformation campaign" that the party is opposed to forming a coalition and said the Pachmarhi Declaration made it clear that the party could go in for such an alliance without compromising its ideology.

Asked how the Congress would make up the numbers after the DMK and the INLD have gone over to the government camp, Singh said it was not necessary for the party to spell out the numbers at this stage.

He dismissed the BJP's claim to a mandate to rule as a "fraud on the people of India", arguing that the national agenda for governance was not the plank on which the BJP had campaigned in the 1998 election.

He said the government has disillusioned the people and proved its ineptitude in handling national matters, both of security and of concern to the common citizen.

"It is time that, in the name of God, who also has been unabashedly betrayed by them [the government], and the name of the country, which has been brought to the crossroads, the Lok Sabha consigns this communal and corrupt cabal to the dustbin of history," he said.

UNI

Tell us what you think of this report