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Trinamul, Anna DMK foil Vajpayee's plans for deputy speakership

Serious differences in the ruling coalition, with some of its constituents declining to sign the nomination papers of its official candidate Rita Verma, forced the government to postpone the Lok Sabha deputy speaker's election scheduled for Tuesday.

Highly placed sources said the Trinamul Congress, All India Anna DMK and the Pattali Makkal Katchi made it clear at the allies meeting presided over by Prime Minister A B Vajpayee this morning that they cannot sign the nomination papers as they were actively working for a consensus.

Sources said a nomination paper signed by Haryana Vikas Party member Surinder Singh as a seconder was given to the AIADMK leader S R Muthiah for signature as proposer. He, however, politely declined to sign.

The campaign for a consensus candidate initiated by TC chief Mamta Banerjee gained momentum at the allies meeting. The AIADMK and the PMK totally backed her move while Naveen Patnaik of the Biju Janata Dal and Maneka Gandhi maintained that the BJP should go ahead with the contest and the allies should back Rita Verma.

At one stage, senior BJP leader Pramod Mahajan said the allies should take a united stand. At this point it was suggested that the prime minister should speak to the Congress on the issue. After some wrangling over protocol, Vajpayee spoke to the leader of the Opposition Sharad Pawar over the telephone. Initially, the Congress was not in favour of withdrawing its candidate P M Sayeed from the race and party leaders held a meeting with Congress president Sonia Gandhi for a final decision.

The issue was, however, amicably resolved in the chamber of Speaker G M C Balayogi, minutes before the deadline for nomination ended, when the both sides agreed to withdraw the candidates and postpone the election to the winter session of Parliament.

As part of the agreement, Pawar and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Madan Lal Khurana signed a joint statement to this effect. Chief whip of the Congress party P J Kurien said he was now confident that the consensus would favour Sayeed. Congress sources said both the prime minister and Khurana have been in touch with its leaders since last night.

Pawar and Khurana, in a joint statement, said Banerjee's proposal for postponing the election in order to arrive at a consensus was considered, and a joint decision was arrived at not to file nomination papers today by both candidates.

Khurana said the joint meeting of the BJP and its allies earlier in the morning decided to stand by their decision to field Rita Verma and members present had even filled in the required forms. But then Banerjee put forward her viewpoint for a consensus.

It was then decided to leave the decision to the prime minister. Since time was running out, it was felt that unless any tangible result emerged, the BJP would file the nomination of its candidate.

However, Banerjee took the initiative to bring the leader of the Opposition and the two Congress whips to Balayogi's room. Khurana also went there. It was there, at Banerjee's insistence, that the joint statement was prepared and signed announcing deferment of the deputy speaker's election, Khurana explained.

UNI

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