BERHAMPUR: The All India Congress Committee president and former prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao last week said that his party’s support to the United Front Government at the Center was not blind” and the party could make a rethinking on extending its support if the latter committed Serious mistakes and did not rectify them in time. “We will caution them to rectify their mistakes and if they are Serious ones and they did not rectify them then there would definitely be a rethinking by our party on the issue of extending our support to them,” Mr. Rao ‘said while addressing a workers’ meeting at Chatrapur near here during his three-day visit to Berhampur, his new Parliament constituency, This is Rao’s maiden tip to his constituency after the Lok Sabha elections last month.

Rao, however, reiterated that his party did not want instability to prevail at the Center and would provide “positive support” to the Deve Gowda Ministry to strengthen it. Rao, mentioning the reported unhappiness of the CPI over the style of functioning of the Gowda ministry, indirectly hinted that his party might bail out the Government in the event of a serious crisis.

Explaining why his party did not want to form the Government at the Center after the elections, Rao said the party had realized that with just 140 members in the Lok Sabha, it might not be able to give a stable Government. However, he said, the post-election development had clearly proved that no government can survive without Congress support. “It also proved how strongly the Congress is rooted in the country,” he added. In this context he said the BJP leader, Atal Behan Vajpayee, during his short stint as the prime minister had made an attempt to spread disinformation that the Congress would split and one section of the party would merge with the BJP, However, Vajpayee and his party utterly failed in their mission.

On his decision to vacate Nandyal constituency in his home State of Andhra Pradesh in favor of Berhampur, Rao said he had done so to honor the request of Orissa Chief Minister J.B. Patnaik. He clarified that he had contested from two seats in the last Lok Sabha not because he was unsure of retaining the Nandyal seat. “The way Nandyal which I represented four times had been transformed. I could win the seat in the next four Lok Sabha polls,” he said adding the people of his old constituency would never regret electing him.

Stating he had great attachment to a backward State like Orissa, Ruo announced that he would dedicate himself for the development of the State in general and Berhampur in particular. He urged the party workers nolo nurse the apprehension that he would neglect his new constituency just because he belonged to another State. “Today is the beginning of all developmental works here and I will personally monitor all these works,” he added. Rao is scheduled to inaugurate several developmental schemes during his three-day stay in the constituency. Chief Minister J.B. Patnaik who accompanied Rao said though Rao was not the prime minister at present, he would get all the developmental works for the constituency done as Prime Minister Deve Gowda considered Rao his “political guru.”

Article extracted from this publication >>  June 26, 1996