The Hindu : Our combine will oust U.P. Govt.: Ajit Singh

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jul 08, 2003

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Our combine will oust U.P. Govt.: Ajit Singh

By Our Special Correspondent

BANGALORE JULY 7. The president of the Rashtriya Lok Dal and former Union Minister for Agriculture, Ajit Singh, today expressed confidence that the four-party combine, including the Samajawadi Party of Mulayam Singh Yadav, would succeed in its bid to form the Government in Uttar Pradesh shortly.

Participating in a "Meet-the-Press'' programme organised by the Press Club of Bangalore and the Bangalore Reporters' Guild here today, he said the combine would oust the present Bahujan Samajwadi Party-Bharatiya Janata Party Government during the next legislature session.

The Governor should have called for a legislature session to ascertain the claim of majority of the present Government rather than merely go by the claims made on letters submitted to him by individual political parties.

Mr. Singh said that political compulsion and common interest had prompted the four parties — the Congress, the RLD, the Kranti Dal of the former U.P. Chief Minister, Kalyan Singh, and the Samajawadi Party — to come together.

"We are confident of success when the legislature session is summoned.''

Referring to the circumstances that led to his exit from the Cabinet over a month ago, Mr. Singh said it was in the offing for quite some time. "Confrontation was building owing to a conflict in policies. The quantum of drought relief, subsidy in fertilizer prices, income tax on agriculture, and the continuous neglect of farmers in contrast with the benefits showered on the organised sector had resulted in differences building up.''

He said the announcement by the Prime Minister in Parliament that the interest on farm loans would be waived for a year owing to extreme drought conditions was more a piece of "jugglery of figures, or trickery.''

The fact was that of a total interest of Rs. 672 crores on farm loans for the given calendar year, the Government rescheduled the loans over a five-year term and the interest of the first year amounting to around Rs. 400 crores was waived.

In other words, all that the Government had waived was a mere 20 per cent interest on farm loans.

While 18 States were reeling under drought and the Government announced a grant of a mere Rs. 2,201.75 crores to them, it gave a budgetary support of Rs. 11,500 crores to the Unit Trust of India to overcome its losses.

But for his serious opposition, the Union Finance Ministry would have tried to introduce income tax on farmers.

Later in the day, Mr. Singh held discussions with several senior Janata Dal leaders, including the former Chief Ministers, Ramakrishna Hegde, and S.R. Bommai, and the Janata Dal (United) leader, P.G.R. Sindhia.

He spoke to the former Prime Minister, H.D. Deve Gowda, over telephone.

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