10-14-2007, 08:33 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Games Paswan plays </b>
LInk
Manoj Chaurasia
PATNA, Oct. 13: Almost all the UPA constituents, Mrs Sonia Gandhi's Congress to Mr Lalu Prasad's RJD are busy trying to save the government. Lok Janshakti Party president Mr Ram Vilas Paswan, a coalition partner known for his unpredictable political behaviour, is, however, singing a different tune.
"The LJP will go it alone in the next Lok Sabha polls." Mr Paswan said as much after Mrs Gandhi, in her veiled attack of the Left, described the opponents of the Indo-US nuclear deal as the "enemies of national development" at a rally in Haryana on Sunday.
Mr Paswan, whose party has lent its support to the UPA government, is one of the Cabinet ministers in the government heading the key ministries of chemicals and fertilizer, and steel. The LJP has only four members in the Lok Sabha against the RJD's 23.
Political experts read "shrewdness" into Mr Paswan's threats of not being part of the UPA in the next polls. Experts say<b> Mr Paswan's latest move is a part of his gameplan to distance himself from the ruling coalition with time to spare so that he does not invite censure for joining the next ruling combination, in the event of the UPA losing the election.
A shrewd politician, Mr Paswan holds the reputation among his colleagues of never being out of power.</b> He has joined one government after another at the Centre, including the BJP, which he now routinely calls "communal", since he was first elected to the Lok Sabha in 1977, riding the nationwide anti-Congress wave. Mr Paswan's fate, as Lok Sabha records show, took an unexpected leap when the National Front government headed by Mr VP Singh came to power at the Centre on 2 December, 1989.
Mr Paswan, then a Janata Dal leader in the good books of Mr Prasad heading the Janata Dal government in Bihar, had been made labour and welfare minister in the VP Singh government.
Then he became the railway and parliamentary affairs minister under the United Front government, first headed by Mr HD Deve Gowda and then by Mr IK Gujral. The UF government had come to power on 1 June, 1996 after an unceremonious exit of the Vajpayee government that lasted first for 13 days and then 13 months as no "secular" party, not even Mr Paswan's, wanted to lend its support to the "communal" party. When the Vajpayee-led coalition government came to power for the third time in 1999 with a comfortable majority, Mr Paswan joined the government where he held such portfolios as communication and coal.
He quit the government in April, 2002 after differences cropped up between them over allocation of "insignificant" portfolios, though his official reason was the government's failure to handle the Gujarat communal riots
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<b>Paswan wants to ally with Congress in Gujarat </b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Paswan said it was time Gujarat saw a change from the BJP rule as the state had stagnated on the development front in the last 10 years.
'Where is the development that the BJP is harping on,' he asked.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
LInk
Manoj Chaurasia
PATNA, Oct. 13: Almost all the UPA constituents, Mrs Sonia Gandhi's Congress to Mr Lalu Prasad's RJD are busy trying to save the government. Lok Janshakti Party president Mr Ram Vilas Paswan, a coalition partner known for his unpredictable political behaviour, is, however, singing a different tune.
"The LJP will go it alone in the next Lok Sabha polls." Mr Paswan said as much after Mrs Gandhi, in her veiled attack of the Left, described the opponents of the Indo-US nuclear deal as the "enemies of national development" at a rally in Haryana on Sunday.
Mr Paswan, whose party has lent its support to the UPA government, is one of the Cabinet ministers in the government heading the key ministries of chemicals and fertilizer, and steel. The LJP has only four members in the Lok Sabha against the RJD's 23.
Political experts read "shrewdness" into Mr Paswan's threats of not being part of the UPA in the next polls. Experts say<b> Mr Paswan's latest move is a part of his gameplan to distance himself from the ruling coalition with time to spare so that he does not invite censure for joining the next ruling combination, in the event of the UPA losing the election.
A shrewd politician, Mr Paswan holds the reputation among his colleagues of never being out of power.</b> He has joined one government after another at the Centre, including the BJP, which he now routinely calls "communal", since he was first elected to the Lok Sabha in 1977, riding the nationwide anti-Congress wave. Mr Paswan's fate, as Lok Sabha records show, took an unexpected leap when the National Front government headed by Mr VP Singh came to power at the Centre on 2 December, 1989.
Mr Paswan, then a Janata Dal leader in the good books of Mr Prasad heading the Janata Dal government in Bihar, had been made labour and welfare minister in the VP Singh government.
Then he became the railway and parliamentary affairs minister under the United Front government, first headed by Mr HD Deve Gowda and then by Mr IK Gujral. The UF government had come to power on 1 June, 1996 after an unceremonious exit of the Vajpayee government that lasted first for 13 days and then 13 months as no "secular" party, not even Mr Paswan's, wanted to lend its support to the "communal" party. When the Vajpayee-led coalition government came to power for the third time in 1999 with a comfortable majority, Mr Paswan joined the government where he held such portfolios as communication and coal.
He quit the government in April, 2002 after differences cropped up between them over allocation of "insignificant" portfolios, though his official reason was the government's failure to handle the Gujarat communal riots
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<b>Paswan wants to ally with Congress in Gujarat </b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Paswan said it was time Gujarat saw a change from the BJP rule as the state had stagnated on the development front in the last 10 years.
'Where is the development that the BJP is harping on,' he asked.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->