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Adamant Gowda plays spoilsport - The Indian Express

Harish Gupta ()
24 April 1997

Title : Adamant Gowda plays spoilsport
Author : Harish Gupta
Publication : The Indian Express
Date : April 24, 1997

Trouble is brewing in the United Front and the next eight days
could be crucial. The hurt feelings of those who have been ignored
in the leadership crisis have not yet been assuaged, despite the
best efforts of Prime Minister I K Gujral and other UF leaders.

To begin with the setting up of the United Front-Congress
Coordination Committee for the smooth functioning of the Gujral
government has run into rough weather as former prime minister H D
Deve Gowda has declined to be its member and UF convenor N
Chandrababu Naidu is not acceptable to the Congress to head the
Committee.

Since the CPM and Chandrababu Naidu are insisting on Deve Gowda be
retained as Front's chairman causing acute embarrassment to Inder
Kumar Gujral, Janata Dal president Laloo Prasad Yadav, working
president Sharad Yadav and other constituents are devising a
strategy to isolate the Left further.

Majority of the Front's constituents including the Janata Dal, DMK
TMC, AGP, BKKP, NC, CPI and others have expressed the view that
continuance of Deve Gowda as Front's chairman will create
complications in the future coordination due to the former prime
minister's bitter battle with Congress president Sitaram Kesri.

These partners argue that Deve Gowda will continue to lend his
helping hand to Kesri's detractors in the Congress and force Gujral
to rewrite his "consensus doctrine" if he continued as chairman of
the Front.

Deve Gowda's refusal to come out with any positive message in
support of the Gujral government after he won the vote of
confidence in the Lok Sabha yesterday and his reluctance to comment
on its longevity today at his first luncheon meet with journalists
in 11 months, is an indication that he has his own agenda.

Srikant Jena and Ram Vilas Paswan, two Union Ministers, were
present to lend their morale support to Deve Gowda and except for B
L Shanker, MP, none was present from his home state of Karnataka.

Since the Congress and the United Front have committed to President
Shanker Dayal Sharma to work in close coordination in future and
said that they would set up a committee soon, differences have
arisen in the United Front over its constitution.

Some of the Janata Dal leaders, on the condition of anonymity, have
said that the role played by the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister in
consultation with CPM general Harkishan Singh Surjeet is
responsible for the TMC's exit from the government and weakening of
the Front.

Therefore, Naidu should be removed from the convenorship of the
Front and someone who has no axis to grind should be made its
convenor.

The 33-member CPM and 17-member TDP had held the entire UF to
ransom for 10 months.

The Prime Minister also made a reference of his meeting with
Moopanar during the course of his speech yesterday and passed on
the blame to someone who has a "beard" and pleaded that no one
carrying a mustache be punished. Whether Gujral was blaming Naidu
or Harkishan Singh Surjeet for the treatment meted out to the
veteran TMC leader or somebody else could be anybody's guess.

He has decided to retain not only the entire ministerial team of
the Deve Gowda government, but his principal secretary Satish
Chandran, Cabinet secretary T S R Subramaniam, Home secretary K
Padmanabhaiya, Director Intelligence Bureau Arun Bhagat, CBI
director Joginder Singh and others.

He has entrusted the task of PMO's press relations to S Narendra,
Principal Information Officer.



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