NEW DELHI , 17 August 2003 — “What crime have I committed?” Defense Minister George Fernandes posed this question as Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee earned support from the government coalition allies yesterday, who pledged to help defeat the no-confidence motion.
“All parties (in the coalition) have issued a three line whip to their MPs and we hope that this motion ... will be thrown out without great delay,” said Fernandes as he closed a two-hour meeting.
Vajpayee’s National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has a comfortable majority in the 545-member lower house but the government is taking no chances in making sure the opposition-sponsored motion is defeated on Tuesday. The NDA has a strength of more than 320 against a combined opposition of 212, a Parliament official said.
Fernandes, convener of the NDA, said regional coalition allies Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) had extended their support to Vajpayee. Their support was considered crucial as TDP has 29 members of Parliament and BSP has 10, and their withdrawal could make the Vajpayee government vulnerable.
MPs were to consult each other again tomorrow ahead of the debate at a meet chaired by Vajpayee, he added. A spokesman for Vajpayee’s Hindu nationalist BJP party, Vijay Kumar Malhotra, said the strategy of the government would be to “take advantage of the opportunity to highlight the achievements of the government and expose... the opposition”.
The opposition — led by the 118-year-old Congress party — has made it clear it does not expect the government to fall during the no-confidence vote. Instead it wants to use the motion to force Vajpayee to address a controversy related to defense purchases that stalled parliamentary proceedings last week.
