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Laloo, Mulayam fail to persuade Deve Gowda to quit

Tara Shankar Sahay in New Delhi

United Front leaders Mulayam Singh Yadav and Laloo Prasad Yadav on Thursday night made an abortive attempt to persuade Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda to step aside for one of the ruling combine's senior leaders and thus prevent the vote of confidence.

According to Samajwadi Party officials, Mulayam Singh and Laloo Yadav approached the prime minister on their own initiative although they were the most vocal about Deve Gowda's continuance in office. The two leaders approached the prime minister after Deve Gowda's dinner for UF MPs.

Mulayam Singh and Laloo Yadav impressed upon Deve Gowda that such a selfless gesture -- making way for another UF colleague -- would not only prevent the Bharatiya Janata Party from coming to power, but also project the image that the coalition government was not to be easily dislodged.

Deve Gowda told the two Yadavs that while he appreciated their appeal, stepping aside for anybody else would be self-defeating for himself and the ruling coalition. The prime minister said it would be best to take the harder option and face a vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha.

Undeterred by the prime minister's response, Mulayam Singh and Laloo Yadav went to Union Home Minister Indrajit Gupta and appealed to him to make the prime minister change his mind. But Gupta refused and pointed out that his party's (the CPI) national executive had just endorsed the United Front stand of facing the vote of confidence.

The UF's earlier confidence about the vote in Parliament was undermined by the fact that few Congress MPs were willing to defy the leadership's whip to vote against the Deve Gowda government.

Congress president Sitaram Kesri let it be known that anybody defying the party whip would not only be pulled up, but "exposed."

This threat apparently worked and even Kesri's bitter rival, former prime minister P V Narasimha Rao, told his supporters that they should not defy the whip.

What happened before the Lok Sabha met on Friday morning

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