Kalyan Singh wins vote of confidence
Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow
Uttar Pradesh Governor Romesh Bhandari's decision to the Kalyan Singh government 48 hours -- from the withdrawal of support by Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party -- to prove its confidence on the floor of the assembly surprised everyone.
The BJP were surprised that the time given was "so little". The Opposition -- and political analysts -- were surprised that Bhandari had not summarily dismissed the government on the same lines that his predecessor, Motilal Vora, had used to dismiss the Mulayam Singh Yadav government when his then ally -- ironically, again, the BSP -- withdrew from the alliance.
The vote of confidence has been sought and, amidst high drama, won. Yet, the biggest topic for debate in the UP capital centres around Bhandari's step.
It is speculated that the governor was fully convinced that Kalyan Singh would meet, in the assembly, the same sorry fate that befell BJP stalwart Atal Bihari Vajpayee in Parliament, when his government of 13 days fell flat on its face while seeking a similar vote.
In the event, Bhandari -- and Mulayam Singh of the Samajwadi Party -- received the rudest of shocks when support for the beleaguered BJP began pouring in, from the most unexpected quarters.
The avalanche was triggered by the Congress party in the state, which split rather lopsidedly, 22 of the 37 party MLAs opting to form a new political entity called the UP Loktantrik Congress. A segment of the Janata Dal followed that lead. And three members of the seven-strong Janata Dal caught the general fever and declared themselves a separate group. With a section of Independent MLAs extending support to the BJP, Kalyan Singh could have gone to sleep on Monday night confident that he already had 206 votes in his bank, and was just seven short of the magic number of 213.
When the state assembly met at noon for the trial of strength, five more Independents had joined what was obviously a bandwagon on a roll. And a dozen BSP MLAs, defying the party whip to cast their lot with the BJP.
This took the BJP's tally to 222. And despite some inspired fisticuffs and the liberal throwing of such misguided missiles as mikestands and paperweights by the Opposition, the bottomline was that Speaker Kesri Nath Tripathi
could declare, at the end of the vote, that "Kalyan Singh has won the vote of confidence of
this House with a tally of 222 votes."
If the final tally was what interested political watchers, then the drama preceding the actual voting will, thanks to the ubiquitous television cameras, be what has the public gaping. There was for the seasoned assembly watcher a sense of deja vu -- when, in 1995, Mulayam Singh had sought a similarly crucial vote amidst uproar and violence.
The difference perhaps lay in the fact that on that occasion it was the ruling party -- Mulayam Singh's Samajwadi Party -- that instigated and in fact, carried on, the violence. While here, it was the Opposition -- initiated by the Congress, and continued by the others -- who were at the epicentre of the disturbance.
Interestingly, both then and now, it was the BJP that found itself at the receiving end of the violence. However, this time round the BJP departed from its pacifist stance of 1995, and retaliated with vim and not a little vigour, leading to a free for all that lasted a good 20 minutes.
There really was no provocation for the incident. Barely had the strains of Vande Mataram stopped echoing in the assembly hall, than Pramod Tiwari, leader of the badly fractured Congress Legislature Party, led his group into the well of the House. Within minutes, BSP members, following a signal from their leader Mayawati, joined the Congress.
Slogan shouting remained the mode of self-expression for a few minutes, until a Congress MLA picked up a sound box and hurled it at the speaker's desk. Tiwari for his part vented his frustration on a plainclothes policeman, who within second found himself a punching bag for as many members of the Opposition as choose to lay their hands on him.
The ice, as it were, was broken. And before you could say free for all, mikes had been wrenched loose from desks and were sailing through the air into the Treasury benches, while footwear and paperweights were the preferred medium of self-expression of some others.
The BJP members remained pacifist for a while, but on finding the assembly marshals unable to stop the aggression, began to retaliate.
War having thus been declared, legislators belonging to the Congress, BSP and SP rushed into the lobby, picking up whatever weapon came handy -- flower vases, wooden desks, you name it, they brandished it against the Opposition.
Through it all, Speaker Tripathi was heard calling for peace and calm -- heard, that is, by the observers in the galleries, but apparently not by the legislators themselves.
Finally, police personnel in augmented numbers streamed into restore order. And only then could the speaker begin the real proceedings of the day.
Of course, at this point the Opposition, having failed to get the assembly adjourned, had staged a 'walkout'.
Kalyan Singh tabled the motion seeking a vote of confidence. The ayes were systematically counted by having each legislator -- as stipulated by Governor Bhandari -- sign his name in a book kept in the lobby. Twohundred and twenty two votes for the motion was more than sufficient to carry the day, and Tripathi announced the motion carried, before adjourning the assembly.
Asked why he did not adjourn the assembly when violence broke out, Speaker Tripathi pointed out that he had been specifically instructed by the governor not to adjourn under any circumstances, until the vote had been taken.
Tripathi indicated that he had been warned, even before the assembly assembled this afternoon, that there could be violence. Why then didn't he beef up the police contingent and station them closer to the scene of operations? Or again, why did he not summon them when violence first broke out? "I was hoping that they will
respond to my repeated appeals for restoring order," was the answer.
Analysts suspect, though, that the speaker might well have been teaching the governor a lesson and, in the process, allowing the defeated Opposition to disgrace itself further.
Kalyan Singh dubbed the violence as "pre-planned", and was quick to accuse Governor Bhandari of playing "a dirty role" in the entire affair. "There is enough reason to believe
that all along, Bhandari was only aiming at his own vested interests, attempting to put his friends in power by depriving a popularly elected
government of its legitimate right to rule the country's most
populous state," Kalyan said, urging the President to recall Bhandari.
Bhandari, for his part, remained closetted with his officials and the observers he had detailed to report on Tuesday's session of the assembly. Meanwhile, outside the gates of the Raj Bhavan, members of the BSP, Congress, Samajwadi Party as well as Janata
Dal and Left parties staged their own individual sit-ins -- demanding the dismissal of the Kalyan Singh government for, ironically, the very violence they had triggered and indulged in.
Sources indicate that in his report to the Centre, Bhandari has recommended dismissal of the Kalyan Singh government. Neither Home Minister Indrajit Gupta nor Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral, however, are believed to set much store by a recommendation that clearly violates Constitutional provisions.
Gujral, meanwhile, is believed to be under pressure from both Mulayam Singh and Congress leader Sitaram Kesri, who demand that the BJP government in UP be dismissed. The stick being held out by the Yadav-Kesri combine is believed to be withdrawal of support to the UF government at the Centre.
However, even if Gujral acquiesces, a bigger hurdle for those pressing for the dismissal of the Kalyan Singh government lurks in the form of President K R Narayanan, who is reportedly uninclined, in this instance, to permit the use of Article 356 for the dismissal of the state government.
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