[Reuters]

Published date: 27th Nov 1989

27 November 1989

Reuters News

English

(c) 1989 Reuters Limited

NEW DELHI, Nov 27, Reuter – A giant petrochemical project could hold a clue to whether India’s main communist party will throw its weight behind Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi as he heads towards an election defeat.

Gandhi’s Congress party appeared on Monday to be falling far short of a parliamentary majority and a coalition government seemed inevitable.

Congress would almost certainly have to look for backing to the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPIM), apparently set to increase its presence in parliament.

Two weeks before the elections were called, Gandhi travelled to the eastern, Marxist-ruled state of West Bengal to lay the foundation stone for a 28.5 billion rupee (1.7 billion dollar) petrochemical project at Haldia, on the Ganges estuary.

It was no ordinary pre-election largesse. The 300,000-tonne project had been stalled since the communists won power in West Bengal in 1977, the central government withholding its approval.

The long delay became the opposition symbol how a central government could undermine opposition-ruled states.

Political analysts in Calcutta, the West Bengal capital, said Haldia was a Gandhi peace offering and that the CPIM was receptive.

Publicly, the CPIM wants nothing to do with Congress but party sources say its ageing 10-man politburo is divided.

Some politburo members say they are against supporting the opposition National Front because it is also allied With the rightwing Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The electoral arithmetic shows the National Front will have no chance of forming a government without backing from both the BJP, the election’s biggest winner, and the CPIM.

The two parties at the extremes of Indian politics detest each other and vow never to share power in any coalition government. It is that hatred which leads many to look for a Congress-CPIM coalition.

“It’s not unlikely that the Marxists will support the Congress,” BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani said recently.

He noted bitterly that the communists had rescued Gandhi during 1987 presidential elections by supporting Ramaswamy Venkataraman against a strong opposition-backed nominee.

If Venkatarman had not won, Advani said, “Rajiv would have had to go.”