Indiscipline within UPA Members of Parliament can make UPA coalition collapse anytime - Manmohan ready to quit!
Priyanka Chopra, Special Correspondent
December 14, 2004

Manmohan is upset with many UPA Members of the Parliament (MPs) and their total disregard to protocol and discipline.

He has already tried to quit four times. Sonia Gandhi is upset too. Some of UPA MPs are taking afternoon naps and do not even show up in the afternoon session of the Parliament when most serious issues are debated. Good heavy lunch and afternoon nap is not people voted them into office says Sonia. She has asked all Congress MPs to quit after lunch naps in the afternoon and be present in the Parliament. That may induce other non-congress MPs to come in time and be present in the afternoon Parliament sessions.

Manmohan Singhs frustration manifested again. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is believed to have offered last week his fourth resignation in less than six months of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. He has kept the envelop of his resignation ready with an aide showing the kind of anguish through which he is passing every day. Twice he sent in his resignation to Sonia Gandhi expressing his anguish that some of the ministers are showing disrespect to him and taking him for granted by taking policy decisions and seeking his assent at the last moment. 

Those who enraged him on different occasions to prompt him to offer the resignation included Arjun Singh, Natwar Singh, Kamal Nath and Kapil Sibal who behave as if they are Sonia appointees and Dr Manmohan Singh is there just for the namesake. 

The third resignation offer came two weeks ago, in the middle of the Left-UPA coordination committee meeting when he had a wordy duel with CPI-M General Secretary Sardar Harkishen Singh Surjeet. His lament was that the left parties were bent upon discrediting the government. Surjit, however, gave him a mouthful in the presence of Sonia Gandhi, who chose not to intervene, and flung a full roster of charges against the UPA over its economic decisions. Hell, however, broke loose when a hurt Dr Manmohan Singh asked his aide to give his resignation envelop and got up from the meeting stating that he cannot countenance any further devaluation of the Prime Minister's post. 

Other Left leaders, however, cajoled him to abandon his threat to quit. The same scenario was repeated early this week when he told Railway Minister Lalu Prasad and Steel Minister Ram Vilas Paswan to stop their spat immediately and make public statements withdrawing charges against each other or else he would quit as the Prime Minister. He was quite upset at the BJP-led Opposition picking up the issue of the ministers'' spat to question him inside and outside Parliament. 

Sources in the PM's office say Dr Manmohan Singh is upset that his authority as the Prime Minister is defied by everyone in the government. Initially it were some of the Congress Ministers who were defying him but now the ministers of the allies are also taking own decisions without consulting him. While Congress President Sonia Gandhi keeps sending him missives in her capacity as chairperson of the National Advisory Committee on implementation of the UPA's Common Minimum Programme (CMP), Dr Manmohan Singh finds at least a dozen ministers carrying on own agenda without bothering about the CMP. 

After several rounds of one-to-one meetings with the ministers and separately talking to the senior bureaucrats, Dr Manmohan Singh has informed Sonia Gandhi that he can call meetings every fortnight but he can do little if the concerned ministers do not carry out his orders. Obviously, he has his own doubts that Sonia Gandhi will not allow him to take any action against the erring ministers lest it erodes her authority as the final arbiter in all such matters. 

The only persons in the Government with whom Dr Manmohan Singh has total understanding are Finance Minister P Chidambaram and Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia. Sources said he, however, finds even these two friends have been finding holes in the CMP to which the UPA had committed itself before taking the reins and hence his prime worry is that he would ultimately get the blame for a discredited government.