Kanshi Ram hopeful of a smooth transfer of power
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Kalyan Singh, who is expected to take over as Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister from Mayawati of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) later this month, yesterday met party president L K Advani and conveyed his opposition to the party considering the alliance partner BSPs demand for a change of assembly speaker.
The two leaders had an hour-long meeting yesterday afternoon amid statements by several leaders that the transfer of power from the BSP to the Bharatiya Janata Party would be smooth.
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As per an agreement between the alliance partners, the chief ministership is to be shared for six-month tenures. Mayawatis tenure ends on September 21.
Kalyan Singh is understood to have told Advani that he is not interested in the chief ministership if it comes with several conditions imposed by the BSP, including a BSP man as the new speaker.
The compulsion to ensure that the alliance is not broken is more for the BSP than the Bharatiya Janata Party, Singh is reported to have remarked.
The BSP cadres will be at the receiving end if the alliance collapses and Presidents rule is imposed. Mulayam Singh Yadav will rule by proxy and get back at the BSP for the incidents during Mayawatis tenure in which Samajwadi Partys workers and leaders were singled out. So common sense dictates that BSP does not precipitate matters, a senior party leader said. Yesterday, there were several statements by players involved to the effect that the transfer of power on September 21 would be smooth. These included Mayawati (in Sultanpur) and BSP supremo Kanshi Ram (in Chandigarh). However, to reports that speaker Kesarinath Tripathi had refused to resign, Kanshi Ram is reported to have said that that is the Bharatiya Janata Partys problem, and that the BSP had nothing to do with it. In Hyderabad, Bharatiya Janata Party general secretary M Venkaiah Naidu said the replacement of speaker during the transfer of power was not there in the original agreement, but since the matter was now being raised by the BSP leadership, it could be sorted out.
The party had authorised senior leader Atal Behari Vajpayee to negotiate and take a decision in this regard, Naidu said, adding that a decision would be taken before the September 21 deadline.
On Tripathis refusal to resign, Naidu remarked: He is expressing his personal opinion. It is a forceful argument on his part to advocate that the office of the speaker is unnecessarily being dragged into the controversy. He added that Tripathi would have to abide by whatever decision the party high command takes on the issue. In Pratapgarh, Ashok Singhal, a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Partys fraternal organisation, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, opposed a change of speaker and said a speaker is above party politics.
He cautioned that the non-implementation of the agreement between the two coalition partners would be most unfortunate.