Pawar's aides lay the ground for his becoming PM
Syed Firdaus Ashraf in New Delhi
Sharad Pawar is likely to emerge as the top contender for the prime ministership when the Congress Parliamentary Party meets on March 7.
"The Congress should form the government after the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies fail to prove their majority in the Lok
Sabha," says a senior Congress official who is close to the former defence minister.
His argument is that the nation cannot afford another election and a compromise must be reached among all the secular parties. Also, a section of the party feels that if another election is held, then the BJP and its allies will easily win the poll.
Former Union minister N K P Salve told Rediff On The NeT, "The nation cannot afford an election at this juncture. So, I feel a compromise will be reached between the UF and Congress since
Harkishen Singh Surjeet, general secretary of the Communist Party of India-Marxist, has also agreed that
secular parties must come together to form a government."
At the moment, Pawar's supporters say that besides him and party president Sitaram Kesri, there are only two other contenders for
the prime minister's post in the Congress: former finance minister Dr Manmohan Singh, and Rajesh Pilot.
However, they feel that Dr Singh's candidature will not be supported by
the Left parties who have 48 seats in the new Lok Sabha and are critical about his economic policies. And as far as Pilot
is concerned, he has lost considerable clout in the party after he lost the Congress Working Committee
election last year.
The only opponent who could give Pawar a run for his money is Congress president and CPP leader, Sitaram
Kesri. Besides being closer to Sonia Gandhi than Pawar, he defeated the Maharashtra leader by a huge margin of votes in the Congress presidential election last year.
However, Kesri was completely overshadowed by Sonia Gandhi during the election campaign, and there is no way he can lay claim to leading the party.
"The situation has changed since the Congress has won with a huge margin in Maharashtra," says a former
Union minister who is close to Pawar.
However, despite Pawar's best efforts to cultivate her, Sonia has chosen to keep her distance from the Maratha leader.
In 1991 when the Congress elected P
V Narasimha Rao as its leader, Pawar had planned to contested against him and only withdrew his candidature following pressure from party veterans like K Karunakaran. That was in the aftermath of Pawar winning 38 out of the 48 seats from
Maharashtra. Obviously, his ambition did not go down well with 10, Janpath.
Interestingly, Maharashtra is the state with the largest contingent of Congress MPs in the new Lok Sabha, with 33. And allies like the Republican Party contribute another four, adding up to 37 MPs. The runner-up is Rajasthan, where the Congress won 18 out of 25 seats.
Pawar's supporters believe that if anyone can convince the UF leaders to extend support to the Congress, it is him, since most of them like Samajwadi Party chieftain Mulayam Singh Yadav are close to him. Besides, he is also close to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu and former Bihar chief minister Laloo Prasad Yadav.
"Out of 141 Congress members in the Lok Sabha, 33 are from our state. So definitely we have an
advantage," says one Congress leader from Maharashtra.
EARLIER INTERVIEW:
'Why is Vajpayee worrying so much about who our prime ministerial candidate will be?'
Elections '98
Tell us what you think of this report
|