The Congress is working towards facing a mid-term election later this year or in early 1998. Party president Sitaram Kesri yesterday told chiefs of state units to prepare for elections and draw up constituency profiles and formulate strategies to be adopted in their respective areas.
The state unit presidents had been called to discuss the logistics of the August plenary session in Calcutta. Kesri used the occasion to term the UF government as a weak and unstable one. But for the record, he saidthere was no immediate move to withdraw support.
Kesri, however, noted the disintegration of the Janata Dal without naming the party, and said the country was looking to the Congress to provide leadership. Party sources said much would depend on the situation after the plenary session. If the UF becomes more brittle after the split in the Dal, the Congress could use the issue of oil pool deficit and the governments measures to tackle it as an excuse to withdraw support, and forcing a mid-term election.
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Kesri believes that the country is facing a crisis, and a special responsibility lay on the Congress.
He told the state unit chiefs that while the Congress had remained united, other parties were disintegrating.
Earlier in the day, senior party leader Pranab Mukherjee, a key Kesri aide, told a seminar that nobody should rush into believing that the days of the single-party rule had lapsed, and that the age of coalition had arrived. For instance, he said in 21 assembly elections between 1991 and 1996, a decisive verdict had been given on 17 occasions.