challenging
new chapter in my life had begun! At this stage, it would be apt to quote Winston Churchill: ‘It seems I have spent a whole life to prepare for this moment.’ Though not directly seeking the top post, I assumed the office of Prime Minister of India on 21 April 1997 at 10 a.m. when the president, Dr Shankar Dayal Sharma, swore me in as the ‘First Servant of the Nation’ in the magnificent Ashoka Hall at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in the presence of a vast array of dignitaries.
Physically, the entire procedure was strenuous. I had hardly slept for the past two nights, caught up as I was in tying up so many loose ends. The president had summoned me to Rashtrapati Bhavan at 9 p.m. on 20 April to hand over the formal letter of appointment as the Prime Minister of India. He informed that the swearing-in ceremony had been fixed for the very next day at 10 a.m. Earlier in the afternoon, the leaders of the constituent parties of the UF had met the president to endorse my name as the Prime Ministerial nominee.
I drove from Rashtrapati Bhavan to Andhra Bhavan where the aforementioned leaders joined me. In our prolonged meeting, it was all smooth sailing, except for Mulayam and Lalu, who created obstacles. Mulayam wanted to be named as the deputy Prime Minister, but Naidu was able to persuade him to put off his demand for a while. On the other hand, Lalu was too hard a nut to crack. Till 4 a.m. (22 April) he insisted that I drop Union ministers Devendra Yadav, Srikant Jena, C. M. Ibrahim and Ram Vilas Paswan for no other reason except for his personal feuds with them. Ultimately, at 4.30 a.m., I succeeded in persuading him to relent and replace only Devendra Yadav. Then I had to rush back to Rashtrapati Bhavan, where I asked the cabinet secretary to notify the entire Council of Ministers under Deve Gowda, except Devendra Yadav, that they had been retained. Eventually, on 22 April 1997, at 10 a.m., the new cabinet was sworn in.
The Business Advisory Committee of the Lok Sabha decided that I should seek, on 22 April, a vote of confidence that the president had mandated.
After a brief post-lunch nap at home, I made my debut as Prime Minister by addressing the Confederation of Indian Industry’s (CII) annual conference. In my speech, I assured the audience that additional economic reforms, which the industry so keenly awaited, would be brought about. The event was reported favourably by both the electronic and the print media and the stock market also responded positively.
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My second day in office (22 April) was mostly devoted to a long and gruelling debate in the Lok Sabha prior to seeking a vote of confidence for the new government (as stipulated by the president). The debate, began at 11 a.m. and concluded at 9 p.m. I made two speeches: the first at the beginning and the second at the end. Mulayam Singh had suggested – and rightly, I felt – that since my first speech as Prime Minister in the Lok Sabha was being telecast live, it must be in Hindi. The concluding one, of course, was in English.
On both occasions, I refrained from going into the nitty-gritty of policy matters and governance and, in my own way, tried to rise above party politics and concentrated instead on our legacy of the freedom struggle and its relevance to the contemporary era as the country was just a few months away from celebrating its fiftieth anniversary of independence (on 15 August 1997). I talked about the Gandhian principles that had spelt out our social agenda and about the Nehruvian ‘tryst with destiny’. I pointed out that many crucial tasks still remained unfulfilled: more specifically, they pertained to delivering social justice to the poor, ensuring employment for all sections of society (especially the downtrodden) and providing food and shelter for the destitute. I finally highlighted a wide range of issues including the status of women, the need for uplifting the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST) and the significance of cooperative federalism (in other words, cordial Centre–state relations).
The motion of confidence was passed in our favour by a voice vote a little after 9 p.m. Only the BJP members registered their ‘nays’. Thereafter, I went over to the Rashtrapati Bhavan and presented to the president the decision of Parliament. It was 12.15 a.m. (on 23 April) when I completed this formality.
I began 24 April by meeting a large number of people: both at home and also those who had gathered at the Prime Minister’s official residence on Race Course Road. There, I spent an hour or so with Deve Gowda, who had not yet moved out. (He had sent a message a day earlier that he wanted to meet me.) I found him struggling to come to terms with himself after his fall from the lofty office. The main target of his wrath was Lalu Prasad Yadav. Though not unjustified, he was turning the matter into a bitter feud. The former Prime Minister was keen that I avoid getting close to Sita Ram Kesri, the Congress president, who was primarily responsible for toppling his government. He was insistent that I should refuse to attend any meeting with the All India Congress Committee (AICC) leaders, even if I were invited, which I found to be a rather odd demand, particularly given the inescapable reality that the government I headed depended heavily on cooperation and support from the Congress. Deve Gowda had a long list of unaccomplished tasks, in which I was not particularly interested; I had my own priorities. I wanted to strengthen the institutions created by Jawaharlal Nehru, which had lost their lustre over a period of time.
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Relations between the United Front and the Congress had improved substantially after my becoming Prime Minister. Sita Ram Kesri sought a meeting with me. As per the mutually agreed-to formula, ‘the PM and the Congress president would meet periodically for summit-level coordination’. Consequently, I invited him (on 24 April 1997) for lunch at Hyderabad House (a palatial mansion situated near India Gate). He apprised me of his two meetings with G. K. Moopanar, who, along with P. Chidambaram and a few others, had broken away from the Congress to form his own party: the Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC). (As mentioned earlier, Moopanar was not willing to join the UF Government, but did offer outside support.) In these meetings, Kesri had asked him to join the government for a ‘more intimate participation in governance’. For running the government efficiently, I needed the services of Chidambaram – who had held the vital finance portfolio in the Deva Gowda Government.
Kesri told me that he had noticed that the relationship between Chidambaram and Moopanar was no longer close or intimate. Hence, Moopnaar had not encouraged Chidambaram to participate in his meetings with Kesri. The growing rift between the two leaders had been brought to my notice the previous day by Jayanthi Natarajan, a former Congresswoman who too had joined the TMC. She blamed Moopanar for this development.
Kesri tried to sell me the idea of setting up a five-member composite committee consisting of representatives from the UF and the Congress. (Both Kesri and I would be members.) Such a proposal had been earlier rejected by the UF (during the Deva Gowda regime) since it would catapult Kesri into a position of parity with the Prime Minister as chairman of such a committee. I too rejected this idea though Kesri was fully convinced about its efficacy. He wanted to discuss this topic once again with me after a ‘talk with the Congress Working Committee’.
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Ever since I had taken over as Prime Minister, I had not been able to devote the needed amount of time to the nitty-gritty of administration because I just could not avoid a seemingly unending series of meetings with people from all walks of life. But I was determined to make up for lost time.
The attorney general of India, Ashok Desai, and the Union law minister, Ramakant Khalap, apprised me of the various pending cases in different courts against high-profile politicians. They also underlined the government’s helplessness in the face of recent judicial activism. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had been thinking of appealing in the Supreme Court against the Delhi High Court’s verdict (in the third week of April 1997) in favour of former Union ministers, including L. K. Advani, V. C. Shukla, Madhavrao Scindia and Kamal Nath, in what came to be known as the ‘Hawala scam’. This was a Catch-22 situation. Either way, I stood to lose politically.
The situation regarding a case against Prabhakar Rao, son of the former Prime Minister, Narasimha Rao, was similar. Prabhakar was alleged to have been involved in a massive urea scam. He was then out on anticipatory bail and the CBI was planning to appeal against it.
I was also apprised of the case against media baron Ashok Jain who headed the Times of India group of publications. This case was started at the behest of C. M. Ibrahim during the Deve Gowda regime to show him (Ashok Jain) his place. According to N. K. Singh, the then revenue secretary, the case was based more on vendetta on the part of the Enforcement Directorate rather than any substantive evidence. The judiciary had ordered the secretary to report directly to the court, which meant bypassing the political hierarchy. I decided that the best course for me would be one of total non-interference and allowing the law to take its own course, despite the political pressures mounting from all directions.
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Meanwhile, the Moopanar-led component of the UF finally decided that four of its members would rejoin the government. The return of the finance minister, P. Chidambaram, was of particular importance at that stage because the Left parties were objecting to some features of his previous budget. As soon as Moopanar conveyed this news to me over the telephone (while the cabinet meeting was going on), I asked the cabinet secretary (T. S. R. Subramaniam) to request the president to swear in the new incumbents on 30 April 1997. I had also decided to induct Jaipal Reddy, a reliable ally, from Andhra Pradesh as the minister of information and broadcasting after getting the support of Naidu, since Reddy was not a Member of Parliament. (He eventually became a Rajya Sabha MP.) The swearing-in could not take place on 30 April because Chidambaram requested me for a postponement till 1 May since the chosen day was not auspicious. Though his request sounded a bit bizarre to me, I complied with it.
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Mulayam Singh Yadav, the new defence minister, called on me on 1 May 1997 soon after the swearing-in of the new cabinet and assured me of his complete loyalty and support. As he put it in Hindi: ‘Aapki buddhi aur mera sangharsh mil kar chale, to bahut kuch ho jayega.’ (Your intelligence and my efforts together can achieve a lot.) He told me that though his name had been sponsored for the office of Prime Minister, he had himself withdrawn it since he was keen to ensure that I occupy the post, particularly because of my grasp of diplomacy. As he was secular in his outlook, he wanted to take on the BJP (known for its pro-Hindu stance), for which he sought my support. Mulayam Singh then came up with some ‘requests’. He wanted Romesh Bhandari, a former foreign secretary and a Congress appointee, to be retained as the governor of Uttar Pradesh (his home state), basically to keep the state government (headed by his archrival Mayawati of the Bahujan Samaj Party) in check. He also wanted a gubernatorial berth for a party colleague and a seat for another in the Rajya Sabha from the nominated quota.
Deve Gowda too met me that evening and once again spewed venom against Lalu. He was keen to end Lalu’s influence over the Janata Dal, for which he wanted my cooperation, as he wanted to take over the reins of the party by proxy by making me the party president. I did not oblige him. The next morning (2 May), J. H. Patel, who had succeeded Deve Gowda as the chief minister of Karnataka, called on me and openly denigrated his predecessor as he evidently wanted to distance himself from Gowda!
Excerpted, with permission, from Matters of Discretion:
An Autobiography, by I K Gujral, published by Hay House, New Delhi