960429

India names 2nd

PM as BJP govt falls

NEW DELHI: India named its second prime minister in as many weeks on Tuesday after the country's Hindu nationalist government resigned ahead of certain defeat in a confidence vote.

H.D. Deve Gowda, the leader of the United Front alliance of leftists and centrists, said he had been nominated as prime minister by President Shankar Dayal Sharma and would be formally sworn in on June 1.

"Rashtrapathiji (the respected president) has asked me to form the government," Deve Gowda told reporters outside the presidential palace.

His nomination as prime minister-designate following the resignation of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, head of the short-lived Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, climaxed a political drama launched by indecisive general elections in April and May.

Asked if he was excited, Deve Gowda said: "There is no excitement because I never expected it... I will try my best to live up to the expectations of 900 million people."

He said that he has been asked by Sharma to prove his majority in parliament by June 12.

Deve Gowda, 63, will have to resign as chief minister of the southern state of Karnataka before he can be sworn in. He will also have to win a by-election to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament, within six months.

He staked his claim to the post following Vajpayee's resignation, which came only 12 days after being sworn in and in face of certain defeat for his minority government in a confidence vote.

Vajpayee was India's shortest-serving prime minister since it gained independence from Britain in 1947.

The United Front has the support of 192 deputies in the current 535-strong parliament following the elections in the world's largest democracy.

The Congress party, which suffered its worst electoral defeat but still has 136 deputies, has pledged to support Deve Gowda but not to join his government.

As the United Front alliance of leftists and centrists prepared on Tuesday to take power from the short-lived Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, Rao was once more thrust to centre stage.

The alliance can only survive with the support of Rao's politically-mauled Congress, putting the 74-year-old veteran politician in a position of influence, political analysts said.

Rao's hold over the new leaders is expected to help him to consolidate his five-year-old economic reform programme, they said.

It was yet another comeback for the man who was plucked out of semi-retirement in 1991 to be Congress' stop-gap leader.

But he became the only person outside the Nehru-Gandhi family to complete a full term as prime minister since independence in 1947.

Some political analysts say Rao's lack of charisma proved an asset in his mission to reduce India's political temperature from the boiling point to lukewarm.

Eyes hooded, lips pursed, rarely smiling and never visibly angered, Rao delights his senior bureaucrats. They say he reads his brief, never turns up late and is infallibly courteous.

But politicians speak more of his adroit machinations to remain in power. They point to his retaining control of the Congress despite the setback in the elections and quelling a rising murmur of protest against his leadership.

Authorities were on alert for protests and street violence after pro-Hindu demonstrators in Bombay, India's commercial capital, protested after the resignation announcement.

Tensions are likely to be high on Wednesday, a national holiday in secular India, because of possible clashes between pro-Hindu demonstrators and Moslems marking the martyrdom of a grandson of the prophet Mohammed (PBUH).-Reuter