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No question of resignation, Hegde tells PM

Commerce Minister Ramakrishna Hegde is understood to have told Prime Minister A B Vajpayee that there was no question of his conceding the All India Anna DMK's demand of resigning from the Cabinet, since no charges are pending against him in any court.

Hegde, who had a lengthy meeting with Vajpayee just before leaving for Islamabad to attend a SAARC meeting, was replying to the prime minister's query on the charges levelled by AIADMK supremo J Jayalalitha.

Addressing a news conference, Lok Shakti spokesperson M Raghupathy said since the prime minister has not sought further clarifications, ''the party assumes the prime minister is convinced about the bona fides of the reply given by our leader.''

As to the charges that the Kuldip Singh Commission had indicted Hegde on allotment of prime land in Bangalore to a non-resident Indian housing society, Raghupathy said the V P Singh government had dropped the charges on the ground that there was no prima facie case against him.

Raghupathy said the ruling coalition's coordination committee meeting in New Delhi on May 9 should concentrate on people's issues rather than on bickering among the constituents. The committee should deal with instances of mass suicides by more than 100 farmers in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra due to indebtedness.

He said the Lok Shakti had deputed an experts team to the affected areas for an on-the-spot assessment of the situation which has come to the conclusion that the fertilisers and pesticides provided to the farmers were substandard. The Union agriculture ministry should implement corrective measures to improve quality and save the farmers, and his party would submit a memorandum on the situation to Vajpayee in a few days, Raghupathy said.

He described as ''good riddance'', Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy's decision to quit the ruling coalition, and said no one could bring down this government and it would last its full term.

UNI

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