Stormy budget session on the anvil

The budget session of Parliament, beginning on Thursday, is likely to be stormy with the ruling United Front members clashing with their Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party counterparts over price rise and Bofors.

Samata Party member George Fernandes on Wednesday gave notice of a no-confidence motion against the 13-party United Front government, which will come up in the budget session of Parliament. The one-line motion was received by the Lok Sabha secretariat in New Delhi on Wednesday.

According to informed sources, the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Lok Sabha is expected to support the motion.

With the relationship between the United Front coalition and the Congress having soured badly after the latter decided to extend only issue-based rather than unconditional support to the H D Deve Gowda government, both sides are gearing up to fire salvos at each other. However, the plight of the Congress is more severe because it lacks a real issue with which it could put the Deve Gowda government on the mat.

The Congress cannot afford to corner the Front government on the price rise because, as emphasised by Front leaders, the price rise is largely the result of the Congress' policies in the past. As reiterated by federal Finance Minister P Chidambaram, thanks to Congress, the mounting oil pool deficit has become virtually unmanageable and calls for enhanced prices for petroleum and petroleum products. The situation is the same regarding the prices of other essential commodities.

The executive committee of the Congress parliamentary party is meeting in New Delhi again on Tuesday to formulate its strategy for the budget session. That the Congress did not have a viable issue to raise during the session was apparent from the statement of Congress leaders like M V Gadgil and Tariq Anwar.

While Gadgil pointed out that "you will come to know about our issues soon," Anwar contended that the matter was still being discussed in order to have complete coordination in both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.

The United Front, on its part, has little to rejoice about except for pointing out that the Congress has no other option but to support the government.

On the issue of price rise, the Left parties are adamant that Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda should desist from hiking the petroleum prices as that would have a cascading effect, thus harming the common man. Despite the attempts by the prime minister and the finance minister to persuade the Left, the latter, who are part of the United Front, are unwilling to budge.

The sharp division on this vital subject has given hope to many Congressmen that it could use the dispute to its advantage. Thus, the United Front government, and especially Deve Gowda, will have to wade through troubled waters on the question of price rise.

United Front leader and Railway Minister Ram Vilas Paswan said he did not think that the ruling coalition would have much difficulty in the passage of crucial bills in Parliament during the budget session. The government was prepared for all eventualities, he added.

Significantly, the Congress party's performance will, to a large extent, depend upon Sharad Pawar, who is the party's leader in the Lok Sabha. Pawar has begun asserting himself ever since the Congress fared poorly in the recent Punjab polls, thus giving a taste of his incipient challenge to the party chief Sitaram Kesri.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has just declared that it will leave no stone unturned to focus attention on price rise and corruption. The BJP is planning to visit the residence of assassinated party MP, Brahm Dutt Dwivedi, in Farrukhabad district in Uttar Pradesh to highlight that law and order in the state leaves much to be desired.

The BJP has decided to boycott the budget session on February 21 to protest against the killing Dwivedi.

This was decided at the BJP parliamentary party executive held under the chairmanship of Leader of the Opposition Atal Behari Vajpayee in New Delhi on Wednesday morning.

The executive also discussed many other subjects, including moving a no-confidence motion against the United Front government to censure the government on many issues including Bofors, price rise, breakdown of law and order machinery in Uttar Pradesh, and the indiscriminate killing of party workers in Tamil Nadu, BJP Deputy Leader in the Lok Sabha Jaswant Singh told newspersons.

Tara Shankar Sahay, UNI in New Delhi