NEW DELHI, 1 August — Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee offered to resign yesterday, apparently tired of persistent sniping over his management of a rickety coalition that has limped from crisis to crisis for 21 months.
Vajpayee offered to step down at the Bharatiya Janata Party’s parliamentary party meeting but party colleagues prevailed on the 74-year-old premier to stay on. The news that he was prepared to stand down, however, emboldened the opposition as it savaged the government over a crisis engulfing the country’s largest mutual fund manager.
The government has been questioned in the parliament by the opposition and Shiv Sena, a key ally within the National Democratic Alliance. The opposition insisted that Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha step down.
A minister who attended the meeting said the prime minister sat quietly while lawmakers complained that the Communications Ministry was being run in a partisan manner.
That appeared to be the last straw for Vajpayee, who has been assailed by rivals and allies over a fruitless peace-seeking summit with Pakistan and the sharp erosion in value of a flagship scheme of the state-controlled Unit Trust of India (UTI) in which millions of Indians have invested.
“Then Vajpayee got up and said: ‘I’ve been hearing this for some time. I feel that I am unable to run this coalition well. Maybe you should find somebody else’,” said the minister, who asked not to be identified. He said Vajpayee also spoke of unrelenting media speculation that his health was failing and walked out of the meeting. “Party members reacted sharply to the premier’s remarks and in one voice said that Vajpayee could not be allowed to leave,” he said.
