Congress, United Front committees to discuss solution to crisis

In a significant development, a three-member team, each from the Congress and the United Front, has been constituted to hold formal talks for ending the current political crisis.

According to highly placed UF sources, the Front team will be headed by CPI-M general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet. The Congress team will be headed by former finance minister Pranab Mukherjee and consists of former chief ministers A K Antony and Kotla Vijayabhaskara Reddy as its other members.

The constitution of these small teams followed a preliminary understanding between the two parties on Tuesday that formal talks should not be delayed further to pre-empt any move by ''communal forces'' to exploit the situation to their advantage.

Formal talks between the two sides is expected to begin on Wednesday to provide a clear-cut view of the political situation to the Congress and UF steering committee which will meet in Delhi on Wednesday.

Congress president Sitaram Kesri is also hosting a dinner for his MPs on Wednesday at party headquarters.

The outcome of the formal talks will provide ''required political inputs'' to both sides, Front sources said.

The tone for the talks was set on Tuesday morning by Kesri who told a delegation of party MPs that he was prepared to begin a formal dialogue with United Front leaders. Kesri, however, insisted that there is no question of restoring support to the H D Deve Gowda government.

''Prime Minister Deve Gowda should step down to facilitate commencement of a dialogue between the Congress and the United Front,'' he told the Congress MPs who impressed upon him the need to avoid a mid-term poll in the current political scenario.

The party MPs, however, interpreted this statement as hard posturing before the start of a dialogue.

According to an MP, who was a member of the delegation, they conveyed to Kesri that the party should ensure that communal forces like the Bharatiya Janata Party do not take advantage of the current political situation.

Some MPs also demanded that Kesri convene a meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Party to discuss the situation. Kesri, however, turned down the proposal, saying he would meet MPs, state-wise, in the next day or two. He later settled for a dinner for party MPs at the Congress HQ.

A CPP executive is likely to be held on Thursday, the day before the trust vote, to firm up the party's position in Parliament.

Among those who met Kesri were Ahmad Patel, A C Jose, P C Chacko, Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi, Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, Atma Charan Reddy, Praful Patel, Datta Meghe and Imchi Lamba, many of whom owe their allegiance to Sharad Pawar, the Congress leader in the Lok Sabha. Before they met Kesri, the MPs had met twice at the homes of Praful Patel and Atma Charan Reddy.

Dasmunshi referred to moves by the BJP to rope in some UF constituents in their bid to form a government and said the Congress should not do anything which would give an advantage to that party in the current fluid political situation.

Highly-placed Front sources said the committees was set up hours after Kesri cleared formal negotiations to end the crisis. The sources said both sides took care to constitute a small core committee so that a decision could be clinched faster.

In a significant development, Kesri told a Youth Congress delegation that his tirade against Deve Gowda in on Saturday, that he had nothing against the prime minister as a person. He was only criticising the prime minister's performance in containing communalism in the country.

The prime minister's open admittance in Parliament that the bureaucracy was not listening to the dictates of the Cabinet was itself an indicator of the government's helplessness, Kesri said.

''Expression of helplessness'' did not angur well for the post Deve Gowda held, the Congress leader added, and it was for the United Front to ponder over this state of affairs.

Meanwhile, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Janata Dal and the Tamil Maanila Congress have issued a three-line whip to their party MPs asking them to vote in the prime minister's favour during the vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha on April 11.

The Samajwadi Party is likely to issue the whip on similar lines soon after party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav returns from Varanasi where he had gone to console the families of his party leaders who were killed in a shoot-out on Monday.