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Congress is ready for mid-term poll, declares Sonia

Congress president Sonia Gandhi today said her party was ready for a mid-term election "if any such situation arises".

Gandhi told reporters in Chandigarh that the party won the assembly election in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi not because of a negative vote against the Bharatiya Janata Party. "Credit goes to Congress itself for winning the polls," she said. "The question of a negative vote does not arise as we were already in power in Madhya Pradesh."

Earlier, she met legislators from Punjab and Haryana as well as the respective state Congress chiefs, Capt Amarinder Singh and Bhupinder Singh Hooda.

She also met a joint delegation of farmers from the two states and listened to their problems regarding shortage of DAP fertiliser, distress sale of paddy, and the poor economic condition of small farmers.

Amarinder Singh later said Gandhi had "praised the courage of the partymen for winning the Adampur assembly by-poll [in Punjab] despite the wrong tactics used by the Akalis who are in power in the state".

Meanwhile, the Rashtriya Loktantrik Morcha (National Democratic Front) criticised the Congress, saying it was aiming for a mid-term election for its own gain, disregarding national interests.

RLM spokesman Amar Singh said the Congress was least hesitant to topple the governments of Charan Singh, Chandra Shekhar, Deve Gowda and Inder Kumar Gujral, but "talks of stability when the question of ousting the Vajpayee government arises".

Calling the party the BJP's "B-team", Amar Singh said the front, while observing December 6 as "black day" to protest against the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya six years ago, would also highlight the "inertia" of the then Congress government, which had failed to prevent the vandalism.

At the same time, however, the front offered to support the Congress to form a "secular alternative government" at the Centre. "We are ready to extend support to the Congress and will not withdraw it in the larger interests of the nation," Singh said.

About the recent assembly election results, Singh said a "false propaganda" was being spread by Congressmen that the Samajwadi Party, one of the two members of the RLM, had fared badly, and wondered why the party was training its guns on the front rather than the BJP.

He said the Agra East assembly election result was being projected wrongly. He said the Samajwadi Party had not contested the Agra seat in the last Lok Sabha election, preferring to support an independent since the seat was never its stronghold.

UNI

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