Congress, UF tussle over ID 50 celebrations

Congress president Sitaram Kesri has asked Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral to highlight the Congress party's role in shaping post-Independence India during the 50th anniversary celebrations.

The United Front government has finalised a year-long programmes to celebrate the golden jubilee of free India. But the Congress is angry that the programmes planned by the Gujral Cabinet do not eulogise the party's 40 years in power.

Congress sources said Kesri, fresh from his Calcutta triumph, has deputed a team of MPs headed by vice-president Jitendra Prasada and Pranab Mukherjee to meet the prime minister on Tuesday night and demand "adequate significance for the Congress's role in shaping free India."

"The Congress has made a lasting legacy to the country through its more than 40 years in power. Therefore, the government's celebrations should honour the party's dedication to the national cause," a Congress MP told Rediff On The NeT.

Kesri and senior Congress leaders, he said, fear the UF government is shifting the arclights of the freedom celebrations away from the party because of "the anti-Congressism of its coalition partners."

"The Congress is behind modern India's socio-economic progress. It is not right ignoring the party's great services to the country just because we are not in power today," the MP asserted.

The historic midnight session of Parliament marking the 50th anniversary of free India will open to the mellifluous voices of Pandit Bhimsen Joshi and Lata Mangeshkar on August 14-15.

The Congress wants its achievements and legacy to be imprinted in the speech that President K R Narayanan will deliver to the nation from the central hall of Parliament that night.

The party is also peeved at the way Gujral's government has planned the Independence Day programmes. Party sources say it is because not much attention has been paid to the official celebrations that there is a clear lack of enthusiasm for the event across the country.

The nodal agency for the celebrations is the human resources development ministry. Though the ministry set up a national committee consisting of 227 eminent Indians to conceive the 50th anniversary programmes, the panel has just met twice in the past year.

"We fear the celebrations will start and end with the midnight session of Parliament," says Kesri's political adviser Tariq Anwar.

He told Rediff On The NeT that the Congress is in the dark about the programmes the UF government has planned in coming months. "It is sad that many countries across the world are giving much more attention and importance to the celebrations than the UF government," he said, adding that "had the Congress been in power, the celebrations would have been quite different."

Gujral is expected to pacify the Congress MPs when they meet him to discuss the issue. But it is unlikely that he will agree to place on record the Congress's contribution to the nation either in the Presidential speech on August 14-15 or in his own address from the ramparts of the Red Fort on the morning of August 15.