Kesri launches vicious attack against prime minister

Congress president Sitaram Kesri on Saturday attacked Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda, describing him as totally incompetent and a promoter of communal forces.

Addressing a Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee delegation, Kesri said Deve Gowda should have resigned following the Congress withdrawal of support on Sunday. Instead, the prime minister was continuing in office like a coward heading a minority government, the Congress leader said.

The Congress supported Deve Gowda to mobilise secular forces and to fight communal forces, Kesri said, but the prime minister started promoting only communal forces. The Congress chief accused Deve Gowda of having RSS links and now hobnobbing with the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The United Front has taken a serious note of Kesri's diatribe against the prime minister, even as parleys were on between the two sides to end the current political crisis.

The UF standing committee, meeting at the prime minister's home on Saturday evening, were at a loss to understand the reasons for Kesri's attack at a time when the Congress appeared amenable to re-establishing an understanding with the Front.

Kesri dared the Front to go to the polls, saying it would meet its Waterloo if a mid-term election was held. <> The UF leaders viewed the attack as further hardening of Kesri's posture, but declared that no one could draw a wedge between the Front and Deve Gowda.

UF steering committee convenor and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu, who arrived in the capital on Saturday morning, had a 45-minute meeting with his West Bengal counterpart Jyoti Basu and CPI-M general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet to brief himself of the meeting between Basu and Kesri on Friday night.

Kesri has asked all Congress MPs to reach Delhi latest by the evening of April 9 in view of the special one-day Lok Sabha session on April 11 meant for taking up the confidence motion to be moved by the prime minister.

Meanwhile, the BJP national executive has endorsed the party view that a mid-term election is inevitable and called upon its cadres to be fully prepared for the event.

''Let us get ready for governance. Let us begin, in right earnest, our internal preparations as well as our work among the people for the mid-term poll to the Lok Sabha which may take place any time hereafter,'' BJP president Lal Kishinchand Advani exhorted party cadres.

Averting a question about how the party would behave on April 11, Advani asserted that the BJP cadres should get into action ''irrespective of what actually happens on April 11, irrespective of whether the Deve Gowda government survives or falls, and irrespective of when a mid-term poll is announced ...''

In an interview telecast on Friday, Advani had conceded that the BJP was amenable to forming a caretaker government if such an offer was made.