M A I N   N E W S

Jaitley wooing Maya; George holds
talks with Sharad
T. R. Ramachandran
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 12
Insisting that any discussions in garnering support for the party will only begin after trends are available countrywide in the General Election tomorrow, BJP leaders today sought to dismiss the talk of a hung Parliament as highly premature at this juncture.

Union Defence Minister and NDA Convener George Fernandes is understood to have spoken to NCP leader Sharad Pawar and is biding time till tomorrow to get to brasstacks with the BSP and other smaller parties and individuals.

Union Law Minister Arun Jaitley is understood to be focusing on BSP leader Mayawati. It is worth recalling that Mr Jaitley was successful in convincing Ms Mayawati that she should fight the Lok Sabha elections alone rather than in alliance with the Congress or any other party.

Simultaneosuly, BJP President M. Venkaiah Naidu and Union Finance Minister Jaswant Singh held separate meeting with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee during the day on who could join the NDA bandwagon in case of a fractured verdict.

Even as the BJP sought to move forward gingerly after the TDP’s pulverising rout in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly elections yesterday, CPM’s Harkishen Singh Surjeet continued confabulations for the second consecutive day running in forging a Congress-led Secular Front with Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav,
JD (S) chief and former Prime Minister H. D. Deve Gowda and Congress spokesperson Jaipal Reddy.

Support has also come for a Congress-led secular front from several others, including RJD supremo Laloo Prasad Yadav, LJP chief Ram Bilas Paswan and DMK’s
M. Karunanidhi.

DMK’s caveat is that in such an eventuality, the party will extend support from outside and not be part of the government.

Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav’s trepidation on the foreign origin issue of Congress President Sonia Gandhi persisted though he was not averse to the formation of a secular government in case the BJP-led NDA failed to secure a majority on its own.

It was apparent there was no softening of his stand on Mrs Sonia Gandhi being the prime ministerial candidate of a secular front. He side-stepped the question of backing a Congress-led arrangement but was not averse to a Third Front taking shape.

Reiterating that he was not in the race for the post of Prime Minister, he remained skeptical about the proposed secular front being in a position to rummage the crucial arithmetic of 272 seats out of the 543-member Lok Sabha.

Mr Surjeet’s efforts of convincing Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav that the reality of the Congress being the largest single entity in the non-NDA formation cannot be wished away failed to cut ice.

In any case the SP chief In any case the SP chief preferred to wait till the results are known tomorrow before chalking out his party’s strategy on the government formation at the Centre.

The CPM leader, nevertheless, said the leadership issue would not come in the way of a non-NDA government subject to other critical parameters being met.

Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav was agitated when it was suggested to him that the SP was keeping its options open about supporting the NDA in a post-election scenario. He shot back: “It amounts to abusing me.”

Mr Deve Gowda and two other former Prime Ministers—Mr Chandrasekhar and
Mr I. K. Gujral—have ruled out the formation of a third front. This will be woefully short of the numbers thus requiring the crutches of the Congress, which is doomed to come crashing.

As Mr Surjeet and Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav held discussions, Congress leader Jaipal Reddy dropped in. He described this as a mere coincidence. He denied joining
Mr Surjeet and the SP leader in the parleys.

Apparently, Mr Reddy had come with a message, but the Congressman characterised his one-to-one meeting with Mr Surjeet as routine.

Mr Reddy, however, was categoric that his party’s priority was to unseat the NDA and inevitably the role of the Congress had to be a leading one. He too observed that unless the results were known, questions pertaining to a prospective non-NDA government were hypthetical.

Mr Deve Gowda and Mr Surjeet reviewed the overall political environment in the light of the TDP-BJP combine’s defeat in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly elections and its fallout, if any, in the General Election.

Practical in his approach, the former Prime Minister said the TDP debacle reflected the peoples’ rejection of the BJP’s economic policies. About his role in a secular front, he said it would depend on how many seats the JD (S) got in his home state of Karnataka.

With the strategic sessions of the non-NDA group intensifying in a bid to narrow down differences among themselves, the BJP is making a last-minute assessment of its prospects, especially in Maharashtra, Bihar and Tamil Nadu.

George slaps legal notice on Sonia

New Delhi, May 12
Defence Minister George Fernandes has slapped a legal notice for defamation on Congress President Sonia Gandhi, seeking an “unconditional written apology” within 72 hours for her alleged attacks against him in the issue of purchase of caskets for Kargil martyrs.

The notice was sent citing Section 500 of the Indian Penal Code (defamation), accusing Mr Gandhi of having conducted a “defamatory” campaign against the Defence Minister during the recent elections that he had “indulged in corruption in the procurement of aluminium caskets for the Indian Army”.

The notice sent on behalf of Mr Fernandes, who is also the JD (U) President, by his lawyer Abhijat said that failure to respond to it within the timeframe would invite criminal proceedings against her. — PTI

Parliamentary board of BJP to meet tomorrow
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 12
A meeting of the BJP Parliamentary Board will be held here on Friday evening to take stock of the political situation after the announcement of the Lok Sabha results.

A decision to this effect was taken by party president M Venkaiah Naidu after his meeting with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee this morning, sources said.

The counting for the Lok Sabha poll will be taken up from 8 am tomorrow.