Beware of Mrs Gandhi, Indian voters warned

Press, 27 December 1979, Page 6

Beware of Mrs Gandhi, Indian voters warned

NZPA-Reuter New Delhi The Indian Prime Minister (Mr Charan Singh) sought to foil the bid by the former Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. to regain power with a foray yesterday into a constituency she will contest in the General Election next week, During a tour of northern Uttar Pradesh state, Mr Singh attacked Mrs Gandhi at public meetings in Rae Bareli, one of two constituencies where she is standing in the mid-term poll on January 3 and 6. He told voters that the former Prime Minister represented the interests of big industrialists and wanted her son, Sanjay, to rule India. But the Prime Minister was confronted with a new problem in his own constituency of Baghpat, also in Uttar Pradesh, where the opposition Janata Party candidate yesterday withdrew from the contest to support Mrs Gandhi’s nominee. Mrs Gandhi has repeatedly

denied having any plans to put Sanjay in power, but ail her political opponents are concentrating their attacks on him because of the controversial role he played during her 21-month emergency rule. The emergency ended with Mrs Gandhi’s defeat in the 1977 General Election, but the Janata Government which then came to power collapsed last July. Mr Singh took over only to resign a few weeks later. Speaking in Bombay, another former Prime Minister, Morar Desai, who succeeded Mrs Gandhi in 1977, said she had turned her Congress (Indira) Party into a family concern. The Janata Party' leader, Jagjivan Ram, widely regarded as Mrs Gandhi’s main rival for the Prime Ministership in the coming election, said she should quietly retire from politics. Otherwise the Janata Party would oppose her “with all the might at its command,” he told reporters

in the central Indian town of Khandwa. Most political commentators believe that neither Mrs Gandhi nor Mr Ram would be able to win an absolute majority in the 544-seat Lower House (Lok Sabha) of Parliament. In an election broadcast this week, Mrs Gandhi launched a scathing attack on Mr Ram, the most prominent of India’s 100 million harijans whose vote will play a vital role in the election. She spoke of “terrible atrocities” committed on harijans when Mr Ram was a deputy Prime Minister in the Janata Government. “Today Mr Jagjivan Ram promises to redress the miseries of harijans. In spite of their continued harassment, dispossession of their lands, of humiliation and social injustice, he continued in the Janata Government. “What prevented him from raising his voice? Was it not lure of the office and lack of courage?” she asked.