NEW DELHI, DEC 2: Buckling under the fear of snap polls, the Congress today appeared to have formulated a fresh strategy to resolve the current political crisis and restore a United Front government supported by it at the Centre.

The plan approved by the CWC in its meeting this afternoon involves five basic components: Congress president Sitaram Kesri will send a fresh communique to President K R Narayanan withdrawing his earlier letter staking the Congress claim. Kesri will later issue a statement saying the Congress had nothing personal against the DMK and that the Jain Commission's indictment is not a criminal one.

Both Congress and the UF will jointly target the BJP's ``shameful'' inducement to defections, making specific mention of Atal Behari Vajpayee's open invitation to other party MPs, balm will be applied to hurt Tamil pride over the Jain Commission suggestion that Tamils had a role in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination, and the Congress will reach out to the DMK to withdraw ``temporarily'' in the national interest.

Kesri is expected to start formal talks with UF leaders on this from late tonight. Some CWC members were pretty relaxed this evening in a marked departure from the tense mood of the previous days. Said one CWC member: ``I am relieved and my MPs are relieved. I expect everything to be resolved by tomorrow afternoon.''

However, the fresh plan still requires endorsement from all concerned. The UF and the Congress need to find a ``honourable'' way of backtracking from the hard stances of the last few days. Also, it is not clear who will head the next UF government and whether the Congress will be part of it. Indications were though that Kesri might not press for a share of the power cake at the moment to try and cool off tempers. The DMK's role is also crucial to the success or failure of this plan. The new strategy was arrived at after reports came pouring in from several Congress MPs that the BJP was making huge monetary offers to walkover to their side. With MPs panicking, the CWC was summoned to meet at Kesri's house at noon. Apparently, Congress MPs said they were being offered Rs 50 lakhs immediately, an equal sum after defecting and Rs 1 crore later for ``constituency development''. ``This was for non-ministerial candidates,'' a CWC member said on the condition of anonymity.

The CWC took note of this in its 90-minute deliberations before unanimously ``authorising the party president'' to talk to the UF leadership on resolving the crisis and staving off another round of elections. The immediate signal was that divisions in the CWC were papered over for the moment. The appeasement to the hardliners was that the DMK could be brought around on a ``honourable and temporary'' basis to step out of the UF ministry.

This was a sop to meet the hawks' demands. Arjun Singh said later that the CWC resolution, on not supporting a UF government with the DMK in it, would be ``carried to the logical conclusion''. This implied that the hardliners would keep a close watch on Kesri's moves and any attempt to give in to the UF on this would be opposed. But by authorising Kesri to take things into his hand, the Congress has indicated which way it is going now.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.