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Moopanar favours Sonia as prime minister

Tamil Maanila Congress president G K Moopanar today declared that his party would not support the BJP -led government in a possible trial of strength in the Lok Sabha and favoured Congress president Sonia Gandhi heading an alternative government in the event of the fall of the Vajpayee government.

Addressing a press conference at the party headquarters in Madras on his return from Delhi, Moopanar said his party would oppose any move to make AIADMK general secretary J Jayalalitha the prime minister.

Either Jayalalitha or West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu heading an alternative government was out of the question, he asserted.

During his parleys with Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy in Calcutta yesterday, Basu had said he was not interested in assuming the mantle of prime minister, Moopanar pointed out.

He said his party was for stability at the Centre and the Vajpayee government had failed to provide it. Sonia Gandhi, who was heading the largest opposition party, should head the alternative government, he added.

Asked what would be his party's attitude if Gandhi headed such a government and the AIADMK was a part of it, Moopanar said, "We will have to think about it."

Also in Madras, TNCC Tinidivanam K Ramamurthy today said party president Sonia Gandhi should head an alternative government at the Centre.

Addressing a press conference, he parried a question whether she should head the government in the present Lok Sabha or after fresh elections.

The horoscope of the 12th Lok Sabha was yet to be cast, he told a questioner.

Asked whether he thought if an alliance between his party and the AIADMK was on the cards, Ramamurthy said this was a matter to be decided by the party leadership.

They would decide the issue considering the aspirations of the Congressmen in the state, he added.

He said the then party leadership headed by P V Narasimha Rao and G K Moopanar had taken negative decisions on the question of alliance in the state in 1996.

UNI

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