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No-trust motion against Vajpayee bites the dust

PALLAB BHATTACHARYA, New Delhi
An opposition-propelled noconfidence motion against the government of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was defeated by Lok Sabha, the lower house of Indian parliament, by a big margin of 126 votes Tuesday midnight.
Though there was no threat to the government right from the start, the motion, moved by Leader of the Opposition and Congress party
chief Sonia Gandhi, was rejected with 312 members voting against and 186 supporting it.
It ended two days of marathon debate lasting 22 hours and a wordy duel between Vajpayee and Gandhi.
Making a 30-minute combative intervention at the fag-end of the debate, Vajpayee questioned the rationale behind the no-confidence motion and rejected Gandhi's charge that his government had jeopardised the country's defence,
weakened national security and "mortgaged" foreign policy.
The prime minister reacted sharply to Gandhi's nine-point "charge sheet" she had placed against his government while moving the motion on Monday and said he was shocked to find the leader of the opposition using words like "insensitive, incompetent, irresponsible and brazenly corrupt" against the government on the floor
SEE PAGE 11 COL 4 FROM PAGE 12 of the House.
"It is a peculiar thing that terms like 'charge sheet' are used by one party against another. This is not good," Vajpayee said.
"I have been in parliament since 1957 and there has been no occasion when a no-confidence motion has been brought like this," he said adding even the debate by opposition members did not bring out the reason behind tabling the motion.
Vajpayee said he wondered why the motion was brought. "A notrust motion is brought when a government is on the brink of collapse or to keep it on its toes. But I wonder why such a motion has been moved now when there is no question of our government breaking, nor do you (the opposition) intend to break it," he added. "It is a case of sour grapes," the prime minister said.
Sonia Gandhi, in her reply, hit back by saying that on a number of occasions in the past a no-trust
motion had been brought to expose the "failures" of the government of the day and not to topple it.
She said the prime minister had not responded to the series of charges brought against his government by the opposition members in the course of the debate.
Vajpayee strongly defended his defence minister, George Fernandez, who had been at the receiving end several times of opposition allegations of irregularities in defence purchases, saying Fernandez was being targeted on "baseless charges without any proof."
Disputing Sonia Gandhi's charge that the government had lost the people's mandate, Vajpayee retorted "who has made you the judge? The trial of strength will take place when the assembly elections are held and people will decide." He was apparently alluding to this year-end's elections to legislatures in four states.