NEW DELHI, 28 January 2004 — Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee met President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam yesterday evening and recommended dissolution of the Lok Sabha. Dissolution of the Lok Sabha will pave the way for early poll. The decision to this effect was taken earlier in the evening by a meeting of the Cabinet. Presided over by the premier the Cabinet adopted a one-line resolution that the Lok Sabha be dissolved on Feb. 6.
After the Cabinet meeting, Vajpayee drove to the Rashtrapati Bhawan and informed the president about the Cabinet’s decision.
Earlier this month, the Indian government had announced an interim budget would be presented to Parliament on Feb. 3 in a clear indication of early elections around April. The scheduled date for elections was October.
Normally, an interim budget is passed only to take care of government expenditures until elections are held and does not contain the long-term economic policies announced during budget sessions every February.
However, the government had previously not announced the dissolution of the lower house of Parliament, which paves the way for fresh general elections.
India’s lower house is composed of 545 members who are elected directly by the people with a term of five years.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj told a news conference later “the Cabinet meeting was very short, but most important. There was only a single decision taken. The Cabinet decided to advise the president to dissolve the lower house on Feb. 6,” she added.
Swaraj said that the government wanted to complete the business of the upper and lower house including passing of the interim general budget and another for railways by Feb. 5.
She added that the decision was taken after members of the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party had urged Vajpayee to call for early elections and coalition allies had also agreed to let him decide the timing of polls.
The autonomous Election Commission has to now announce the date of the general elections.
India’s ruling BJP party is keen to cash in on a “feel good factor” stemming from economic growth of over eight percent, peace moves with rival Pakistan and wins in state polls.
The main opposition party Congress expressed confidence of dealing with the political challenge thrown at them.
“We are ready for the elections whenever they are held. We don’t believe there is a feel good factor,” said Kapil Sibal, spokesman of Congress party.
Congress leader Sonia Gandhi warmed up for the political battle ahead by complaining to the president yesterday of a “constitutional impropriety” by the ruling BJP party. She said the government stretched the ongoing parliamentary session from December into February but should have convened a new session customary at the beginning of the year.
India’s ruling BJP party has also not been short of scoring political points and on Monday took a swipe at Priyanka and Rahul Gandhi, the heirs of the country’s most influential political family who hail from a lineage of three former Prime Ministers from the Congress Party.
BJP General Secretary Pramod Mahajan said that only those born to Indian parents could be eligible for the office of the prime minister, alluding to the Gandhi siblings’ Italian-born mother Sonia.
The foreign origins of Sonia who became Congress leader after her husband, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was blown up by a Tamil tiger separatist in 1991, has long been a controversial topic raised repeatedly by the BJP.
