NEW DELHI/PATNA: A junior partner in India’s strained coalition pledged yesterday not to topple the government and force early elections after the premier said the administration could be hit by a new pullout.
“There is no question that we will withdraw support. I don’t know on what basis the prime minister said we will pull out,” Mulayam Singh, chief of the socialist and secular Samajwadi Party (SP), told the CNN-IBN news channel.
Twenty-one MPs from the party, which governs the populous northern state of Uttar Pradesh, have pledged their support to the federal government led by the Congress party.
Meanwhile, police say at least a dozen Maoist rebels were killed in a two-day gunbattle between two rival rebel groups in an eastern province of the country.
On Thursday, Manmohan Singh said he could not rule out the chance of the SP quitting the coalition, in what would be the third such exit of a party in barely six months. The SP has been dropping strong hints in recent days that it might split from Singh’s government, which has already lost its parliamentary majority.
Even if the SP were to leave the coalition, the prime minister said he believed he would be able to steer some reforms through Parliament, where he can also rely on the support of several parties that are not in government.
Singh said his government had “to take into account the fact that we don’t have the majority to get Parliament to approve some of our reforms.” The Tamil Nadu-based Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam party quit last week after accusing the government of failing to condemn alleged atrocities against Tamils in Sri Lanka. Police have recovered the bodies of 12 rebels in Jharkhand state after the gunfight ended yesterday afternoon. It had begun late Wednesday, said Director General of Police Rajiv Kumar. Kumar says police identified six of the dead as top Maoist rebel leaders.
The rebels say they’re inspired by Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong. They’ve been fighting the government for more than four decades, demanding land and jobs for landless farmers and the poor.
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