07-21-2008, 01:47 PM
<b>Trust vote: Congress looks confident but shaken</b>
21 Jul 2008, 0028 hrs IST, Bhaskar Roy ,TNN
Ninan's cartoon
NEW DELHI: Congress had entered the weekend confident and perhaps a little complacent about surviving the critical trust vote in Lok Sabha on Tuesday. ( Watch )
The numbers worked out by party managers had given them the comfort of getting through the rough and rigour of the acid test with RLD chief Ajit Singh and JD(S) boss H D Deve Gowda dropping hints of coming on board. Then, smashing the cool comfort of a wet Sunday morning came a blitz which loomed like a bad omen on the Congress horizon.
In a matter of hours, Ajit Singh and Gowda â both having three votes each in the Lok Sabha â did a volte face. Ajit Singh met Mayawati and told TV channels that his party MPs would vote against government. The IIT graduate railed against nuclear energy and extolled virtues of hydel electricity.
Gowda's son Kumaraswamy, former Karnataka CM, made an appearance at a press conference Mayawati addressed, leaving no doubts about the sudden U-turn the Gowda family had made. "The single-point programme before us is to defeat the UPA government on July 22, all our leaders now have to work to ensure that," the Uttar Pradesh chief minister said.
With Left stalwarts Prakash Karat and A B Bardhan, TDP boss Chandrababu Naidu and Kumaraswamy looking reverentially at her from the side, this could be Mayawati's finest hour in politics. One Congress spin doctor admitted that with the UP CM's emergence on the scene like a Goliath, the complexion of the numbers game had changed. "But for her the opposition would not have been in contention," he said. Party mandarins accused Mayawati of unleashing resources made available by the industrialists in her state.
She almost had guessed the allegation. "Mulayam Singh and his friends are talking of MPs from their camp being bought over; I would like to ask them to give names of those who have purchased the MPs and for how much," Mayawati said. She perhaps wanted to focus on the nuclear deal only but the Leftists persuaded her to raise the issue of inflation as well.
Echoing Mayawati, Karat said that the only job on hand was to get rid of the government. "We will meet on July 23 to chalk out a future programme," he said. Faced with so much action, Congress maintained that close to the finishing line, its movement was "silent and surreptitious". One party manager hinted that faced with the setbacks, the sharpshooters from the government were looking at "unsuspected territory". He probably meant those constituents of the NDA which had not so far appeared vulnerable to poaching.
With each and every vote now absolutely crucial, late night reports suggest that CPM has renewed pressure on Somnath Chatterjee to quit as Speaker after publicly saying it was up to him to decide.
The all-out poaching drive saw Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh displaying BJP MP from Balrampur Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh to the media on Sunday evening and UPA managers hinting that there were more defections in the pipeline. They suggested two JD(U) MPs â P P Koya and Ramswaroop Prasad â would part company with NDA.
Though set back by Ajit Singh and Deve Gowda, UPA managers tried to recoup their losses by targeting Shiv Sena MPs and others belonging to the NDA. They refused to drop the claim even after 11 of the 12 Sainik MPs attended a dinner hosted by Leader of Opposition L K Advani on Sunday.
21 Jul 2008, 0028 hrs IST, Bhaskar Roy ,TNN
Ninan's cartoon
NEW DELHI: Congress had entered the weekend confident and perhaps a little complacent about surviving the critical trust vote in Lok Sabha on Tuesday. ( Watch )
The numbers worked out by party managers had given them the comfort of getting through the rough and rigour of the acid test with RLD chief Ajit Singh and JD(S) boss H D Deve Gowda dropping hints of coming on board. Then, smashing the cool comfort of a wet Sunday morning came a blitz which loomed like a bad omen on the Congress horizon.
In a matter of hours, Ajit Singh and Gowda â both having three votes each in the Lok Sabha â did a volte face. Ajit Singh met Mayawati and told TV channels that his party MPs would vote against government. The IIT graduate railed against nuclear energy and extolled virtues of hydel electricity.
Gowda's son Kumaraswamy, former Karnataka CM, made an appearance at a press conference Mayawati addressed, leaving no doubts about the sudden U-turn the Gowda family had made. "The single-point programme before us is to defeat the UPA government on July 22, all our leaders now have to work to ensure that," the Uttar Pradesh chief minister said.
With Left stalwarts Prakash Karat and A B Bardhan, TDP boss Chandrababu Naidu and Kumaraswamy looking reverentially at her from the side, this could be Mayawati's finest hour in politics. One Congress spin doctor admitted that with the UP CM's emergence on the scene like a Goliath, the complexion of the numbers game had changed. "But for her the opposition would not have been in contention," he said. Party mandarins accused Mayawati of unleashing resources made available by the industrialists in her state.
She almost had guessed the allegation. "Mulayam Singh and his friends are talking of MPs from their camp being bought over; I would like to ask them to give names of those who have purchased the MPs and for how much," Mayawati said. She perhaps wanted to focus on the nuclear deal only but the Leftists persuaded her to raise the issue of inflation as well.
Echoing Mayawati, Karat said that the only job on hand was to get rid of the government. "We will meet on July 23 to chalk out a future programme," he said. Faced with so much action, Congress maintained that close to the finishing line, its movement was "silent and surreptitious". One party manager hinted that faced with the setbacks, the sharpshooters from the government were looking at "unsuspected territory". He probably meant those constituents of the NDA which had not so far appeared vulnerable to poaching.
With each and every vote now absolutely crucial, late night reports suggest that CPM has renewed pressure on Somnath Chatterjee to quit as Speaker after publicly saying it was up to him to decide.
The all-out poaching drive saw Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh displaying BJP MP from Balrampur Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh to the media on Sunday evening and UPA managers hinting that there were more defections in the pipeline. They suggested two JD(U) MPs â P P Koya and Ramswaroop Prasad â would part company with NDA.
Though set back by Ajit Singh and Deve Gowda, UPA managers tried to recoup their losses by targeting Shiv Sena MPs and others belonging to the NDA. They refused to drop the claim even after 11 of the 12 Sainik MPs attended a dinner hosted by Leader of Opposition L K Advani on Sunday.