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Sonia sets terms for Congress-led coalition

George Iype in New Delhi

Congress president Sonia Gandhi today launched a blistering attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party and its policies, but said her party is in no hurry to topple the government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee and form an alternative coalition.

Addressing a day-long All India Congress Committee session in New Delhi's Talkatora Stadium, she, however, restated her stand that the Congress is ready and willing to "take up the constitutional responsibility of forming a government at the appropriate time".

She also put forward a firm condition for a Congress-led coalition government: any coalition arrangement with regional parties would have to be on Congress terms and the basis of the principles enunciated in the party's Pachmarhi declaration.

Declaring that people "are tired of coalitions formed only to grab power," she said: "Good governance is and can be provided by a stable government and only the Congress can form a stable government.''

The AICC session was specially convened to amend the party's constitution to give greater representation to women and weaker sections of society.

Delegates from across the country, senior Congress Working Committee members like A K Antony, Dr Manmohan Singh, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Jitendra Prasada, K Karunakaran, R K Dhawan, Madhavrao Scindia, Arjun Singh, Meira Kumar, and Pranab Mukherjee, and new chief ministers Shiela Dikshit (Delhi), Digvijay Singh (Madhya Pradesh) and Ashok Gehlot (Rajasthan) attended the session.

Sonia used the occasion to bash the Vajpayee government and list the "wrong policies" pursued by it, including atrocities on minorities, disposal of the Srikrishna Commission report, unprecedented inflation, unemployment, and economic recession.

"The country has suffered a lot under a fractious BJP coalition. The Vajpayee government has shown callous disregard for the people and their problems," she said, stating that the Congress is not interested in propping up "similar coalition arrangements".

Ever since the Vajpayee coalition came to power, attacks on the minority communities across the country have multiplied, she said, "especially in BJP-ruled states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Uttar Pradesh". She pledged that the Congress would stand by the minorities "in their hour of trial".

"Sadly, the results of the eight-month-old Vajpayee government are intolerance, sectarian attacks on minorities, and threat to freedom of expression," she said, citing the disposal of the Srikrishna Commission report on the Bombay riots and the fiasco at the state education ministers' conference as examples.

She termed the government's economic policies ''wrong and discriminatory" and said they had led to high inflation, higher unemployment, and industrial recession.

''The BJP coalition has effectively destroyed the safety net carefully envisaged and implemented by the previous Congress governments and Rajiv Gandhi for women, minorities, and the weaker sections of society,'' she observed.

Sonia also accused the government of undermining the national consensus evolved over the years on foreign policy, especially on the nuclear tests.

"This unilateral foreign policy of the BJP government has ominous portents and is detrimental to India's progress in the field of diplomacy," she said. "The need of the hour is to build a national consensus on India's tried and tested foreign policy."

The Congress president also deplored the bombing of Iraq by the United States and Britain, and accused them of violating the United Nations Charter.

She noted that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan appeared helpless. "The situation causes profound concern," she added.

Party posts reserved for women, weaker sections

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