Vajpayee plots strategy

Vajpayee earned support from government coalition allies Saturday who pledged to help defeat a no-confidence motion in parliament next week, a minister said.

Besides ruling coalition partners, the session was attended also by regional parties which are supporting the 24-party coalition government headed by Vajpayee.

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The meeting came a day after Vajpayee held informal consultations with his Deputy L K Advani, BJP chief M Venkaiah Naidu and NDA convenor and Defence Minister George Fernandez last night to cope with the trial of strength, the first to be faced by the government since coming to power in October 1999.

Emerging from the hour-long meeting last night, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj told reporters that the NDA might seek the support of non-NDA party AIADMK, the ruling party in the southern state of Tamil Nadu headed by Jairam Jayalalitha to face the no-trust motion.

The AIADMK has 11 members in Lok Sabha and the regional party has for the last several months been warming up to BJP by supporting ideological issues of the saffron party like law against conversion and uniform civil code.

Though the arithmetic in Lok Sabha is clearly in favor of Vajpayee government, the ruling alliance apparently does not want to leave anything to chance and eleventh-hour anxieties.

The NDA's strength stands around 325 in the 543-member Lok Sabha as against 212 for the opposition. On its own, the BJP, lead partner of NDA, has 183 members against 109 of Congress, the main opposition.

As part of the efforts to cement the cohesiveness in NDA, Vajpayee will address the members of Lok Sabha belonging to the alliance as also those belonging to the parties supporting it from outside on Monday when the two-day debate on the no-confidence motion brought by Leader of the Opposition Sonia Gandhi begins.