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The table on which the Simla Agreement was signed between India and Pakistan is decorated on the 36th anniversary of the event. (PTI)
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New Delhi, July 3: The terms of a potential partnership between the UPA and the Samajwadi Party are being worked out by a quartet of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, national security adviser M.K. Narayanan, Amar Singh and a key political aide to Sonia Gandhi.
The contours of a relationship emerged in the 50-minute meeting Samajwadi leaders Amar Singh and Ram Gopal Yadav had with Narayanan on Wednesday.
Both sides wanted a durable alliance to ensure the UPA government lasted its term. The Congress leadership believes this is not possible unless the Samajwadis are inducted into the government although the detractors of Mulayam and Amar have spread the word that “unconditional support from outside” would be provided.
The Congress has approached the table with “ground rules” such as:
Key ministries (finance, defence, external affairs and home) are non-negotiable and will remain with the Congress.
The “strategic” partnership should not be limited to Parliament. It ought to culminate in a poll alliance in Uttar Pradesh as both parties need each other in the state.
The Samajwadis should not insist on getting portfolios based on their strength. The UPA had allotted berths proportional to the number of MPs a party had.
Since the council of ministers is stretched almost to the limit permitted by the Constitution (79 out of 80), Congress sources said that at best, four Samajwadis could be taken in. “We cannot ask our allies to take away their ministers. We can only tell our MPs,” said a source.
A report drawn up by a committee headed by A.K. Antony had advocated the “one-person-one-post” principle. If adopted, ministers doubling as Congress functionaries could be asked to shed one post.
The Congress expects the Samajwadi Party to pitch its demands “unrealistically” high — such as plum portfolios — so that it can extract big but “realistic” concessions like bailing out business friends from tangles. “We can concede what is realistically possible because the Congress is clear that this coalition government must last out its term and the nuclear deal must fructify,” a general secretary said.
The Congress is also toying with the idea of deferring the monsoon session to August 11 — usually Parliament convenes in the third week of July — and seeking a trust vote. A no-confidence motion cannot be moved for the next six months, which will give the government enough room to press ahead with the nuclear deal without looking over its shoulders.
With the Left irrevocably out of the Congress’s political scheme, the party’s strategists have embarked on a damage-control mission to debunk the perceptions that the Prime Minister and the party had “worked at cross purposes” on the deal and the Samajwadi alliance.
“Singh and Sonia were at one on the deal from day one. Through the crisis, they were in touch,” a party source said. Rahul Gandhi, who was out of the country for a while, was also kept fully in the loop.
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