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Manmohan moves trust vote in Lok Sabha

Abstention by Trinamool Congress may bail out UPA govt

Pallab Bhattacharya, New Delhi
India's embattled Prime Minister Manmohan Singh yesterday moved a motion in the Lok Sabha seeking confidence of the House in his government's performance in the last four years as the trial of strength appeared set to go down to the wire.
Moving the motion for a trust vote to a near-full lower house of Parliament that began a special two-day session on Sunday morning, Singh said, "this exercise was wholly avoidable".
He regretted that this session has been convened at a time when
the government's focus was on fighting inflation, which neared 12 percent, and other welfare and development programmes for the people.
"I beg to move the motion that this House has confidence in the council of ministers," Singh said.
Twelve hours have been allotted for the debate and the voting was expected to take place afterwards.
Singh, who before entering parliament expressed confidence that the UPA government would prove its majority on the floor, made a brief speech in which he did not speak about the merits of the Indo-US nuclear deal over which the Left parties withdrew
support necessitating the trust vote.
The countdown for the trust vote entered the home stretch yesterday amid indications that the UPA government may be bailed out through abstentions by Trinamool Congress and possibly 10 others from NDA.
External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee claimed that the Congress-led alliance has the support of 276 MPs, cleartv cross-’ ing the majority mark.
Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee said she would abstain from voting. There was intense speculation that around 10 Mps
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from BJP, Shiv Sena, JD (U) and BJD may also abstain.
Mukherjee said in his "simple arithmetic", UPA's combined strength of 237 with Samajwadi Party's 39 added up to 276. With the Lok Sabha having an effective strength of 541, the ruling coalition enjoyed a simple majority, he said.
But BJP leader V K Malhotra claimed they needed just four to five MPs more to defeat the govern-
Failure of Shiv Sena MP Tukaram Renge Patil to turn up at the party's parliamentary group meeting triggered speculation that he may ditch the party, which has 12 MPs.
Singh sought the confidence vote after his government was reduced to a minority following withdrawal of support by his Communist allies, which stridently opposed the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal that they allege would undermine the independence of India's foreign policy and affect its strategic nuclear programme.
Singh, in his brief speech, said "This exercise was wholly avoidable as I had repeatedly told the political parties, particularly the Left, that after completing the safeguards agreement with IAEA and a waiver from Nuclear Suppliers Group I would come back to parliament to seek its guidance".
He said every single decision taken by his government "was in the best interest of the nation".
Singh said that Left parties decided to withdraw support to his government when he was attending the Group of 8 developed countries summit in Japan earlier this month and immediately on his return home he met President Pratibha Patil and wanted to seek a trust vote.
Opposing the motion, the Leader of the Opposition LK Advani, in his over hour-long speech, said there was no consensus in Parliament in favour of the nuclear deal with the United States.
Advani said the prime minister should not call Sunday's special session a distraction and accused him of being responsible for the present situation in which his government has to seek a trust vote by "not following tire norms of coalitionpolitics".
"This situation has been brought about not by the opposition NDA and not even by Left parties. It was invited by the government itself”, he said. "Mr Prime Minister, don't blame anyone else. It is your government itself, which is responsible", the oppositibn leader said in a riveting speech.
"The government should not call it a distraction. You invited it yourself, die opposition leader said.
Advani charged that the prime minister and Congress president Sonia Gandhi did not believe in norms of coalition politics. "Had the coalition dharma been followed. this situation would not have arisen," he added.
In this context, the leader of the opposition said that before exploding the nuclear device on May 11, 1998 die then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had taken the consent of his coalition partners and the issue was included in the national agenda of governance of the then ruling coalition led by BJP
Advani said the controversy over the nuclear deal between the
prime minister and Left parties had been going on for more than a year after Singh had said in an interview to a Kolkata daily that he was determined to go ahead with the pact and if Left parties withdraw sup-portsobeit.
He said the opposition wanted to defeat the government in the trial of strength on the floor of the Lok Sabha but did not want to destabilise it.
"I draw a distinction between defeating the govefiimerit 'and destabilising it. ft is not our habit to destabilise an elected government, " Advani said.
The BJP leader said "sometime it appears to me that the nuclear deal is between two individuals (Manmohan Singh and American President George W Bush) and not between two sovereign countries".
Advani said if the nuclear deal was so important for the Congress-led government, then why it had not been included in the joint Common Minimum Programme of Congress and its allies framed in May2004.
The Left parties, which had provided outside support to the government at that time to give it majority, opposed its inclusion in the programme.
He said nuclear deal with the US would make India a "subservient" partner and majority in parliament did not agree with the Congress-led government's interpretation of the deal and its effects on India.
Advani said if BJP and its allies were voted back to power, they would re-negotiate the nuclear deal with the US and not scrap it so that there was no compromise in India's strategic programme and it was an agreement between two equal partners.
He said it was wrong to project BJP-led NDA as being against nuclear energy or against close relationship with the United States.
Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee presided over Sunday’s special session although his party CPI-M wanted him to step down from the post ahead of the trust vote.
Before the confidence motion was moved, Chatterjee said he was very happy to see a "full House" and the entire country was looking at the debate on the important issue.
He asked the members to hold the debate in a manner which raises the dignity of the Lok Sabha.