NEW DELHI: Congress-I president Rajiv Gandhi is trying to get Communist Parties support to resume the office of Prime Minister without having to contest elections in the near future. Gandhi’s visit to Moscow and a long meeting with Gorbachev is said to be linked to this effort apart from making a show of bringing about peace in the Gulf. Before leaving for Moscow Gandhi had a lunch meeting with CPM chief minister of West Bengal Jyoti Basu where the idea of communist tolerance if not support to the new proposed Govt was broached.
The meeting was arranged by another CPM politburo member HS Sujit who has a long record of service to the Nehru dynasty. The offer made was that the Marxists tolerate Gandhi as Prime Minister until new elections were held.
He offered to set an election date as well.
As preliminaries to this offer Gandhi had given an ultimatum to Prime Minister Chander Shekhar to stop refueling facilities to US Air Force planes and had also made certain pro-Moscow gestures aimed at pleasing communists at home. According to CPM sources there P.T.O are not many takers for the Gandhi proposal in CPM politburo although the party did not take a public stand after the meeting with Basu. Before trying to seek such support Gandhi’s men had won over Devi Lal and a section of Janata Dal stalwarts like Arun Nehru and others but in the arithmetic of the Indian Parliament such support was not sufficient Moreover Devi Lals support is unpredictable.
These manipulations were evidently taken note of by Shekhar who decided to postpone the budget so that Gandhi was put in a tight comer.
Shekhar has stepped up his efforts to refurbish his image as a politician by trying to sort out knotty regional problems. He has sent Out more appeals to Punjab militants to open a dialogue with him Factions of militants groaning under the weight of a possible international reaction against not responding to talks offers have sent out confusing signals sometimes rejecting and sometimes accepting the offer under certain conditions. The Babbar Khalsa however was quick to size up the offer as an empty and meaningless move and rejected it outright.
There is an acute crisis of confidence between Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress-I and Govt on the one hand and between the Govt and the Sikhs on the other The PMs cry to the Sikhs to sail him out of the threat posed by Gandhi but at the same has allowed the massacre of Sikhs to continue. A score of Sikh youths are picked up and killed every single day.
As for the Shekhar Congress tussle the president R Venkataraman is said to be on the formers side. The president a south Indian Brahmin is said to be of the view the it is not time yet for elections because V.P Singh’s party is bent on raising the reservations issue for the poor and backward the consequence of which will be fewer jobs for the Brahmins and Banias.
When he appointed Shekhar as PM the president had reportedly extracted a promise from Gandhi that his party would not disturb Shekhar for one year. Now when Gandhi made efforts to dislodge the Govt he was reportedly reminded of his promise and this scotched the toppling plan.
Article extracted from this publication >> March 1, 1991
