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Badal rules out ditching the BJP

Shiromani Akali Dal president and Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today ruled out the possibility of his party joining hands with the Third Front to help the Congress form a government at the Centre following the fall of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led coalition yesterday.

"We are firmly with the BJP," Badal told reporters at Naushera Pannu village in Amritsar district, where he was attending a bhog ceremony.

The chief minister asserted that there was no split in the eight-member Akali Dal group in the Lok Sabha and that all his MPs voted in favour of the confidence motion.

He predicted that the country is heading for a mid-term election. "How can parties that have been enemies to one another in the past and whose ideologies are poles apart run a government," he wondered.

Badal said that by securing 269 votes in the Lok Sabha, Vajpayee had proved that he was still the most popular and acceptable leader in the country. The Congress and its allies have no leaders to match his stature.

In Chandigarh, however, senior Akali politician Gurcharan Singh Tohra, former president of the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee, said the government fell "because of its own contradictions as it failed to keep up its promises".

Tohra, who was attending a congregation at a local gurdwara, said the BJP-led coalition had not cared for the public.

The Rajya Sabha member said the government had also failed to resolve issues relating to Punjab. The row over the inclusion of Udham Singh Nagar in the proposed Uttaranchal state and the water-sharing dispute with Haryana have not been resolved even though the government enjoyed the support of the Akalis, he pointed out.

UNI

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