NEW DELHI, 28 August — The ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition increased its majority in parliament yesterday when it agreed to re-admit two regional parties that had left the alliance earlier this year.
The coalition has more than 300 seats in the 545-member lower house of parliament following the return of the regional Trinamool Congress of Mamata Banerjee and the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) parties. “On the basis of a request by them, we’ve decided to include them in the alliance,” NDA Convener George Fernandes told reporters. The two parties hold a total of 14 seats.
Earlier, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee expressed his willingness to accept Mamata back in the NDA as saying, “I have a soft corner for her.” Vajpayee has “softened” his formerly hard attitude toward Mmata primarily to prepare ground for adopting a strong approach toward Shiv Sena. There was no question of alienating Sena, which has 15 members in the parliament, without strengthening numerical strength of NDA.
Thus Trinamool and PMK’s return to the allaince is significant because of their strength in the parliament. The Trinamool Congress has nine seats in the lower house, while the PMK has five seats.
The Trinamool Congress left the coalition earlier this year because it said the government failed to crack down on corruption in the Defense Ministry after an arms bribery scandal. “We have rejoined because the government has launched an inquiry into the scandal which was our demand before we left,” Trinamool leader Pankaj Banerjee said at a news conference in Calcutta, capital of the eastern state of West Bengal.
“We want to strengthen the hands of the prime minister and use our position in the (central) government to bring in development in West Bengal,” Banerjee said.
The scandal, which cost Fernandes his job as defense minister, re-surfaced this month after the website which first reported the story after it conducted a sting operation said it had supplied prostitutes to army officers as part of its efforts to expose corruption in the defence department.
Fernandes said the coalition leaders also agreed that a commission of inquiry investigating allegations of bribery over defense contracts must speed up its work. The PMK left the coalition after it linked up with an opposition group for local elections.
Coalition leaders who met at Vajpayee’s home also sought to calm the anger of another regional party which threatened to quit the NDA over some remarks by the prime minister. “All misunderstandings will be removed,” said a spokesman for Vajpayee’s Hindu extremist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), V.K. Malhotra.
