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Congress open to forming coalition, says Arjun

The Congress is not averse to the idea of forming a coalition government at the Centre to avoid elections, and a decision will be taken at the appropriate time, according to senior Congress leader Arjun Singh.

The Pachmarhi Declaration has not barred the party from choosing the option of forming a coalition government at the Centre, he said in an interview to a TV channel.

The Pachmarhi Declaration had stated that if coalition became inevitable because of political exigencies the party might consider it, but the decision would be taken only after consulting the state units concerned, he said. "I do not know what others read into this declaration," he said in reply to a question.

The Congress has been consistent that it was ready to fulfil its constitutional responsibility if the present government collapsed, he recalled. One part of this constitutional responsibility is to go for elections, but the Congress does not want to force elections on the people so soon, he said. The other option is to get an alternative going. And, we will explore that when the situation arises, he said.

There is certainly a possibility of trying such an alternative if the situation warranted it, he asserted.

Arjun Singh does not think that the left or other opposition parties wanted to go for elections. If they declare that they want elections and do not want an alternative, we have no objection, he said. However, they will have to consider the ways and means to avoid elections, he said.

Asked whether the state units of the Congress would be as enthusiastic about its national leaders, Arjun Singh said it was up to the other parties to declare their stand. We can take care of our states, he said.

Arjun Singh defended his party's stand on Bihar and ruled out the possibility of any change at the moment. He did not find any merit in Home Minister L K Advani's call to the Congress to reconsider its stand on Bihar.

He said it was not up to the BJP to talk about good governance. Every single institution of democracy has been practically debased. Delhi is not only the political capital but also the crime capital of India. "The manner in which this government panders to the people who take law into their hands - most apt example we could see was when Advani goes to Bombay to prostrate before Bal Thackeray so that the pitches in Delhi or other places are not dug up. I mean, how low can you go and still you are talking about governance," he said.

Arjun Singh said the Congress would insist on setting up a joint parliamentary committee to probe the charges raised by former naval chief Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat and the finance minister's former advisor Mohan Guruswamy. This would be not the first time that defence issues were discussed in Parliament, he said.

Replying to a question he said the Congress was not afraid of Defence Minister George Fernandes's efforts to ferret out all the files relating to defence deals since 1971 and to reopen the Bofors issue. "Let Fernandes make all counter attacks that he can have at his command, but these two issues (Bhagwat and Guruswamy) also have to be attended to," he said. Fernandes could also get files from 1954 but it did not make any difference as he had to attend to these two issues, he said.

The Bofors bogey is no longer relevant. It is dead long ago. And the Congress was not at all bothered about it, he said.

UNI

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