NEW DELHI, 30 April — A crucial meeting of the ruling coalition ended yesterday expressing confidence that the government would defeat an opposition-sponsored censure vote on sectarian violence in Gujarat state.
“The NDA (National Democratic Alliance) is very strong, the NDA is united,” Defense Minister and coalition convener George Fernandes told reporters after a meeting of the alliance chaired by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on the eve of the vote in the lower house.
He said several NDA partners had already issued whips asking their members to vote against the motion.
A similar censure motion is to debated by the upper house on Thursday.
Fernandes’s statement came within hours of the resignation of a Union minister, Ram Vilas Paswan, who said he was quitting because of the government’s inability to curb the Hindu-Muslim violence in Gujarat.
Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party, with five MPs, will vote “in favor of the motion and against the government on Tuesday,” party spokesman Ramvir Singh Bhiduri said.
While the government is still expected to scrape through, the vote is likely to be the most severe test of the coalition’s majority since it came to power in October 1999.
Defeat would not automatically bring the government down, but would be a major body blow to Vajpayee’s Hindu extremist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which is still licking its wounds after a series of regional election setbacks.
Over 900 people, mostly Muslims, have been killed in more than two months of communal clashes in Gujarat, triggered on Feb. 27 when a supposedly Muslim mob burned to death 58 Hindus traveling in a train. The opposition is seeking to censure the central and Gujarat governments — both led by the BJP — for their failure to contain the violence and, in some cases, for allegedly encouraging the rioters.
The opposition has repeatedly called for the dismissal of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi who has been widely criticized for his handling of the communal unrest.
According to a report by the Press Trust of India (PTI), Vajpayee personally spoke to some members of his divided coalition during the day to secure their backing.
Vajpayee faces resistance from two allies — the National Conference (NC) which rules Jammu and Kashmir and the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) which with 28 MPs is the government’s largest supporter.
The TDP has been extremely critical of Vajpayee’s refusal to remove Modi and at one point had threatened to withdraw support from the NDA completely.
A TDP leadership meeting at the weekend said the party would only decide which way to vote after listening to Vajpayee during the censure debate today.
Fernandes yesterday however expressed the hope that the TDP, which has been a “valued and trustworthy” ally of the government would not do anything to “hurt” the present dispensation. The NC was expected to abstain from voting after Vajpayee spoke to its leader and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, PTI reported.
With all its allies and supporters on board, the government has the support of around 310 members in the 545-seat lower house. However, the coalition is certain to lose in the upper house where the opposition is in a comfortable majority.
