HISSAR(HARYANA):The breakaway Congress July 2 launched a virtual election campaign for the Haryana assembly, as N.D. Tiwari and Arjun Singh gave a call for defeating state chief minister Bhajan Lal and his associates, in the coming elections scheduled to be held early next year, The public rally organized by the state unit of the party here projected Birender Singh, known opponent of Bhajan Lalin the state, as future chief minister of Haryana. To drive this point home, Arjun Singh vehemently opposed any unity with the Congress headed by P.V. Narasimha Rao. Tiwari said there was no question of any rapprochement with Rao, who “thinks himself above everyone in national interests also.” Besides this, he said unity could always be on some principles and need not be for “usurping the offices of power.” If this had been their criterion, then Arjun Singh could have become the prime minister of the country long time back, Tiwari asserted.
Both leaders said the ideals of the Congress had been sacrificed at the after of expediency by Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao. They both accused Rao of systematically eroding the time-tested values of the Congress, like secularism, clean administration, rule of law and order and security and justice to the ordinary citizens. In this context, they squarely accused Rao of shielding “political operations like Bhajan Lal” and overtaking the computation and degradation of public life. Tiwari and Arjun Singh claimed that many Congress MPs had privately assured them of support.
They said these MPs were watching the situation before taking a final decision. A majority of them agreed with the issues raised by the two leaders, neither Arjun Singh nor Tiwari said anything about their party’s possible alliance with any other party on the nation level and particularly added that it was too early to say anything about it their speeches, which ‘were obviously election oriented, both leaders stressed on the need of reviving the “real Congress” which was wedded to the ideals of secularism, rule of law and equality of citizens. They were vocal in their criticism of the Prime Minister saying the latter, during his four years of regime, brought the Congress to the lowest ebb in public esteem, pushed away from it the minorities and other secular forces and played in the hands of force like the Bharatiya janata Party, Earlier, party leaders Rangarajan Kumarmangalam and M.L. Fotedar criticized the Rao government for what they called selling out the country’s resources for ‘‘party individual benefits.”
Article extracted from this publication >> July 7, 1995
