Poll fever reflects in Budget debate

Gandhi charges Vajpayee with lack of clarity, double-speak

Politics imbued everything"" parliamentary proceedings on the Budget and even relationships within parties""as the election fever was allowed to officially take over from today.

The Lok Sabha discussed the Budget, but through their speeches, all parties launched attacks on their immediate electoral rivals. Congress chief Sonia Gandhi's target was Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

In a speech in halting Hindi, while speaking on the Budget, Gandhi charged him with "changing" stands on a number of issues like corruption, the Gujarat massacre, Jammu and Kashmir and relations with Pakistan.

Vajpayee has been in public life for more than 50 years and he must remember the movie which starred Dev Anand, called "Asli Naqli," Gandhi said. She charged Vajpayee with lack of clarity and "double-speak".

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, she said was "one of scams". This was evident in defence deals, allotment of petrol pumps, share markets, UTI, Tehelka cases and the Judeo cash-on-camera expose.

Criticism of the Budget""like the setting up of the defence modernisation fund and the second green revolution that she claimed the Congress had thought up first""was incidental. Gandhi went back to her theme that government policies had led to a fall in the value of people's savings and that unemployment had soared.

She charged the government with cronyism and said public sector undertakings were being sold "for a song to a handful of people". Gandhi also questioned the government's commitment to women, farmers, Dalits and disadvantaged sections of society.

On the behalf of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), chief whip VK Malhotra said it was the Congress that was "neck deep in corruption". He charged the Congress with taking money from the erstwhile Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, which was rejected by Congress members.

Daring the Opposition to name their senapati (leader) for the coming Lok Sabha polls, Malhotra said the NDA-coalition had declared that Vajpayee would be their leader. "Unless you (the Opposition) have a senapati, how will you fight the war," he asked.

Alleging the Congress had done little for those in the unorganised sectors, Malhotra said the NDA government had taken care of them. He said the country was now exporting foodgrain to 30 countries and the feel-good factor was sweeping the country. "Those who are deep in desperation will not experience the feel good factor," he said, adding the issue of foreign origin was there but he was not raising it.

The changed alliance realities were reflected inside the House with the DMK putting its full force behind the Congress in the Lok Sabha, instead of the erstwhile ally, the NDA.

But the subtle power play within parties was the most interesting evidence of the election fever gripping leaders. BJP chief M Venkaiah Naidu's office telephoned reporters late last night to inform them that the merger of 50 per cent of the dearness allowance (DA) with the basic pay of government employees, was done after the intervention of the BJP chief with the Prime Minister.

The effort was to convey that Finance Minister Jaswant Singh had resisted this matter right till the end and that it was the BJP president's initiative that finally set things right.

The BJP chief reportedly had a meeting with the Prime Minister and convinced him that it was politically imperative to push this measure thro-ugh. The Prime Minister reportedly consented to persuade the finance minister to put this in the speech.

When Jaswant Singh was asked whether he would contest the Lok Sabha elections, he said: "I will do whatever the party asks me to". The element of exaggerated humility is yet another acknowledgment that elections have changed everything, even relationships in political parties.

Similarly in the Rajya Sabha, Human Resources Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi tried to set right his own politics by making a calculated move to introduce the Bill granting central university status to the Allahabad University- an institution which has considerable impact in Joshi's Lok Sabha seat. Joshi appeared happy when the Opposition stalled the Bill by defeating it with 62-37 margin as he got a political issue to exploit in his constituency.

But several Congress leaders seem to fuming with rage over the party's tendency to fall into the trap of the BJP without applying mind. "We would have claimed the credit if the Bill had been introduced," a Congress leader from Uttar Pradesh said. It would be a disaster to follow the CPI(M) and its allies, which had no political stakes in states like UP and Bihar.