The Hindu : All out moves to appease PWP

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jun 12, 2002

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National

All out moves to appease PWP

By Mahesh Vijapurkar

MUMBAI JUNE 11. Though the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party-led Democratic Front (DF) are confident that the Maharashtra Chief Minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh, can win the confidence vote on Thursday, they want the recalcitrant Peasants and Workers Party (PWP) to re-join the Democratic Front Government so that post June 13, the Government can run smoothly without a threat of disruption. Several offers have been made to the PWP, including a willingness to even break local arrangements these parties have entered into with either the BJP or the Shiv Sena.

The DF calculation is that with the likely unseating of as many as eight MLAs who have defected to the Opposition, it stands to win the confidence vote. That would save the Government but not permanently and, hence, the move for a complete revamp of its broken relationship with the PWP.

The other offers are restoration of all the three posts in the Ministry to the PWP — one with a Cabinet rank — and an assurance that the PWP would be consulted at every step in decision-making with a coordination committee meeting every fortnight. The PWP's lament while in Government was that it was not kept in the picture ever and was taken for granted. Even Enron would be revived only if the PWP concedes.

The PWP's agony is the realisation that if the DF wins the confidence vote without its support when its five MLAs abstain — the CPI (M) will support the motion but later oppose the Government's policies — then the PWP would lose its numerical relevance in the brinkmanship it has indulged in. But the NCP and the Congress are convinced that winning a confidence vote is one thing and sustaining a Government is another; for this it needs the PWP.

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