NEW DELHI: India’s Parliament will meet for a confidence vote in the government on July 21 and 22 after the government’s leftist allies withdrew their support to protest against a US nuclear deal, a minister said yesterday. “This decision has been communicated to the president of India,” Viyalar Ravi, the minister for parliamentary affairs, told reporters after a Cabinet meeting last evening.
A regional party has stepped in to replace Communists who opposed the nuclear deal, but Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government still needs the support of smaller parties and independent lawmakers to survive the confidence vote.
The government will fall if it loses the vote, triggering early elections and damaging chances of the deal. The nuclear deal would be a landmark for India’s relations with the West and allow India access to US civilian nuclear fuel and technology, despite not signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty and conducting nuclear tests in 1974 and 1998.
The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) will face the challenge of proving its majority in Lok Sabha on July 22 in favor of the controversial civilian nuclear deal, news reports said yesterday.
This was decided at a meeting of Cabinet committee on parliamentary affairs yesterday. The two-day special session of the Lok Sabha will be convened on July 21 when the vote of confidence motion will be moved. The voting will take place the next day, the PTI news agency reported, quoting political sources.
Trying to cobble a majority, government allies met yesterday with potential supporting parties, many of whom are keen to avoid polls at a time when inflation is at a record high.
“I have no doubt that we shall prove our majority,” Sonia Gandhi, the ruling Congress party head and India’s most powerful politician, was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India.
Exuding confidence, Gandhi told reporters: “I have no doubt that we shall prove our prove our majority.” She said this after a meeting of coalition partners, during which they discussed their strategy for facing the vote of confidence, following withdrawal of the Left bloc’s support on Indo-US nuclear deal.
Singh met President Pratibha Patil on Thursday to inform her that the UPA was seeking the vote and wanted it to occur as soon as possible. A day earlier, four left-wing parties with 59 members in Parliament broke their ties with the ruling coalition and demanded a confidence vote.
