HVK Archives: Speculation on govt's term - a letter
Speculation on govt's term - a letter - Observer
Praful Goradia
()
10 June 1996
Tite : Speculation on govt's term - a letter
Author : Praful Goradia
Date : June 10, 1996
Publication : Observer
`A bagful of contradictions' by Mr Dina Nath Mishra (The
Observer of Business and Politics, June 7), if anything,
is an understatement about the United Front government. A
kind of rehearsal of what is likely to happen to it was
enacted in Bengal during 1969/71. Mr Jyoti Basu in
particular could not have forgotten those farcical years.
How the United Left Front or ULF and the People's United
Left Front called PULF came together to form the UF? How,
on the one hand, the ministers tried to govern, while the
CPI(M) party leader, Mr "our goal is socialism and for
that is required a bloody revolution" and how in less
than seven months the chief minister, Mr Ajoy Mukherjee,
was driven to want to resign?
So was Dr P C Ghosh, who brought down the ministery by
getting 17 MLAs to withdraw support.
How, thereafter, was Dr Ghosh sworn-in in strict secrecy
by the governor, Mr Dharma Vira, and how his Progressive
Democratic Front ministry collapsed in three months?
Inevitably, a mid-term poll followed. The UF won and
returned with a reconciled Mr Ajoy Mukherjee again as the
CM.
Soon enough, Mr Mukherjee again felt driven to
desperation. He launched a satyagraha against his own
government which he described as "barbarous and
uncivilised" because the then home minister, Mr Jyoti
Basu, was indifferent to the law and order situation.
When the ministry fell, the governor asked Mr Basu to
prove his claim of having a majority by a head count. Mr
Jyoti Basu, however, did not agree to another midterm
poll so early.
Mr Ajoy Mukherjee yet again became CM of this fourth
ministry but this time with Congress support - all for a
matter of three months. Then came the President's rule
and eventually the 1972 election which brought into power
a Congress majority government.
The rehearsal lasted some four years because the UF had
no need for Congress support at any stage. However self-
contradictory, it enjoyed a majority.
As the current drama in Delhi is being enacted, as it
were, on a Congress stage, can it last much longer than
the Chaudhari Charan Singh government of 1979 or what
happened to the Chandra Shekhar regime in 1991?
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