NEW DELHI:P V Narasimha Rao chosen unanimously as leader of the Congress-I parliamentary party Was sworn-in as India’s ninth prime minister on June 21 A 57 member three tier cabinet took oath with him
The 70-yr-old scholar politician who succeeds Rajiv Gandhi as the Congress-I chief met president R Venkataraman and staked his claim to form the government. Inviting Rao to constitute the ministry the President asked him to prove his majority on the floor of the Lok Sabha within four weeks
Heading the single largest party in the Lok Sabha with 224 members and supported by 16 members of allied parties Rao’s government falls 16 short of absolute majority in a house with an effective strength of 511. Neither the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) nor the National Front Left Front combine has voiced opposition to formation of the Congress-I government.
The way for Rao’s unanimous election was paved following the withdrawal by Maharashtra chief minister Sharad Pawar from the leadership race.
Rao told India Saturday night that it faced a serious economic crisis that could only be resolved by hard decisions new foreign investment and an end to the inefficiency that cripples the country’s growth.
In his first speech as India’s leader Rao struck a pro-Western pro-investment open-market note a marked change from the policies and language that have stamped the dominant Congress Party for decades. A senior Western diplomat said that Rao’s comments on the economy sounded very good to us. They were plainly an attempt to assure Western lending institutions like the IMF that India was serious in its willingness to make tough fiscal sacrifices.
Rao a former foreign minister and Congress Party elder spoke quietly and firmly in English on Saturday night. His remarks death with his first priority the crisis in the economy of this nation of 850 million.
Partly because India has had four different governments with four finance ministers over the past two years partly because of the spiraling deficit and prices and partly because of huge-scale public spending. India is facing its worst economic situation in decades.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 28, 1991
