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BJP ditches coordination committee
Rajesh Ramachandran in New Delhi
Within days of its government winning the trust vote in the Lok Sabha, the Bharatiya Janata Party has already dumped one of the commitments given to its numerous allies in the heady, pre-poll days.
Even as the Opposition cries itself hoarse over the short shrift given to the BJP's claims of running the government through consensus right at the outset by sneaking in a candidate for the Speakership, the BJP has quietly decided to bury the co-ordination committee. In the run-up to the election, the BJP had promised to constitute such a panel to iron out differences with its allies.
Ironically, this decision comes at a time when the BJP has seen the number of allies and supporters balloon from a manageable 12 to quite an intractable 18 or so -- which includes the Arunachal Congress, the Haryana Lok Dal, MPs from the North-East, the National Conference and, of course, the Telugu Desam Party.
"Nothing has been decided yet. The committee will not be
constituted immediately," was all that BJP general secretary M Venkaiah Naidu would tell Rediff On The NeT. The BJP's key strategist K N Govindacharya, too, said nothing has been decided on this issue as yet.
"As and when problems arise we will be ready to tackle them. Right now the allies are co-operating with us. It is
quite obvious from their speeches in Parliament," Kushabhau Thakre, senior-most BJP general secretary who is
incharge of organisation, told Rediff On The NeT.
Asked whether the BJP was chary of the United Front's Tower of Babel that went under the name of its steering committee, which could explain its reluctance to constitute the coordination committee, Thakre declined to comment.
However, insiders affirm that BJP leaders now feel that a coordination committee would amount to an extra-constitutional super-Cabinet and would like to do without setting it up, unless of course the allies were to forcefully demand it.
What the leaders fear is that the allies on the committee may exert pressure on the government to take their line in most of
the policy decisions -- and rather than be a captive to these demands, the BJP has decided to give the matter a quiet burial.
That the idea holds water can be seen from the fact that none less than the President had sought such a coordination committee when the Congress withdrew support to the Deve Gowda government and prepared to support the I K Gujral ministry from the outside. The belief is that such a body would help in easing of tensions, especially where the support is not from within but from the outside. And in the present case, considering that a fair share of the BJP's support is from parties outside the administration, the importance of such a committee in the smooth running of the government cannot be denied.
Ironically, it is the Opposition that seems to have caught on to the mantra of better coordination mouthed by the BJP, and is in fact putting it into obvious practice. So much so, that even arch-rivals like Mulayam Singh Yadav and Laloo Prasad Yadav, not to mention Mayawati, are all a-grin and laughter in the Lok Sabha.
"The camaraderie is real even in the Upper House. The traditionally anti-Congress parties of the United Front have come
around to be with us in attacking the BJP," says a Rajya Sabha member from the Congress.
EARLIER REPORTS:
BJP uneasy about coordination committee
BJP goes soft, drops key issues
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