NEW DELHI: A resolution “reaffirming its faith” in the leadership Of the Prime Minister, Narasimha Rao was passed at the unscheduled meeting of the executive committee of the Congress Party in Parliament (CPP) on Dec.10. “The preemptive move by the Rao camp was to set the tone for the meeting of the Congress Working Committee scheduled late in the evening where some CWC members, specially Arjun Singh, N.D. Tewari and Dr. Jagannath Mishra ‘Were expected to raise awkward questions. ‘The 75minute meeting presided by the Union Home Minister, S.B. Ghavan, however, did generate some heat and quite a lot of dust. ‘The unanimous resolution tried to pass on the blame for the party’s debacle in the South on interplay ‘of local factors,” and drew satisfaction from the fact that the party had faced such situations in the past.

As for reiteration of faith, things went off peacefully. But heated ‘exchanges between S.S. Ahluwalia and the Parliamentary Affairs minister, V.C. Shukla, were clear pointers that all that glittered were not gold.

Ahluwalia was critical of the government’s move to hold talks ‘with Opposition leaders on the Bofors issue. It was aimed at embarrassing Sonia Gandhi, he charged, Shukla’s efforts to argue that it was to remove misunderstandings on the issue was to no avail.

‘The general view was that infighting, inept handling of the state party units in Andhra Pradesh and Kamataka and local factors contributed to the defeat which did not necessary imply a rejection of Rao’s economic policies of liberalization by the masses. The Congress Working Committee is understood to have reposed faith in the leadership of Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao in the wake of reverses suffered by the party in the assembly elections. At its nearly three-hour meeting on Saturday, the CWC also reportedly accepted with humility in the verdict of the people in the assembly elections, besides discussing the strategy to be adopted by the party in the next round of assembly elections in five states in February.

Article extracted from this publication >>  December 16, 1994