NEW DELHI: The Congress plot is thickening, causing more and more desperation in the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party at the overtures being made to its allies to topple the coalition government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government in this very budget session of Parliament.

On record, Congress spokesperson Girija Vyas repeated for the nth time that the Congress was not engaged in any toppling game as it will wait for the government to collapse on its own weight and "then carry out our constitutional responsibility."

She, however, in the same breath gave out the gameplan when she asked: "How are we responsible if the allies of the BJP are breaking apart?" She went on to assert that the Congress was "neither hungry for power nor desperate."

When Vajpayee spoke twice, first in Calcutta and then in Tamil Nadu, about the Congress designs to pull down his government, he was only revealing the information he gathered from leaders of some of the allies approached by the Congress directly or indirectly through intermediatories, the BJP sources affirmed.

Girija Vyas, however, lambasted him for making such statements against the opposition party forgetting the dignity that a Prime Minister should maintain. "Let him bother about his fragile and fractured government than raise an accusing finger at us," she said.

SONIA’S AGENDA: Nobody in the Congress knows for definite if Congress President Sonia Gandhi has been assured support of the enough number of the Lok Sabha members of the BJP’s allies, but insiders say she is itching so much to strike now that they can only surmise that she is confident of succeeding in the number game.

Her mind reflected in a vital correction she had made in a statement that the party issued on completion of one year by the Vajpayee Government. The original draft said if the BJP government cannot shape up even after one year, it has to ship out. She changed it into affirmative: "Since the BJP Government could not shape up even after one year, it has to ship out."

That was the first signal the insiders got. Then came a two-point agenda drawn up by Sonia Gandhi herself for the party in Parliament in the remainder of the budget session that begins on April 12 after a 3-week recess.

First and foremost she wants to take a revenge on Defence Minister George Fernandes for all the character assassination he had done of her mother-in-law Indira Gandhi and husband Rajiv Gandhi. But more important is to take support of the BJP’s allies or split them to defeat the Vajpayee Government in the month of April itself.

Sonia wants Parliament paralysed for unending number of days, using the affidavit of sacked Naval chief Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat that levels serious charges of corruption and hobnobbing with terrorists and foreign intelligence agencies on Defence Minister George Fernandes.

BJP’S BOFORS: She knows that Admiral Bhagwat’s affidavit is not foolproof and yet she has directed party leaders to make full use of it to fix George Fernandes in the same manner in which the Bofors kickback issue was built up. "Bhagwat must become BJP’s Bofors," Sonia Gandhi was quoted telling a group of Congress MPs. She wants to pay back the BJP and Fernandes with the same coin levelling all sorts of unprovable charges as they did against late Rajiv Gandhi by racking up the Bofors issue.

The BJP’s worry is that the Congress is deliberately "planting" reports in the Press about its intensive efforts to engineer defections from the BJP-led ruling alliance to bring down the government. Its worry is that such reports may influence the fence-sitters and some of the regional allies who are already facing inner revolt be they Samta Party, Akali Dal or Biju Janata Dal.

No MP wants a mid-term poll and hence the BJP’s worry is that the Congress is trying to create an atmosphere as if it would be able to provide a government in the event of fall of the Vajpayee Government. So long as the MPs fear fresh elections if the Vajpayee government collapses, nobody would cross over to other side and even the Congress knows it, the BJP sources said.

JAYA JITTERS: A five-day visit of AIADMK supremo J Jayalalitha to Delhi from Friday has also created rumblings in the ruling party as Janata Party President Dr Subramanian Swamy has spread a word that Sonia Gandhi would be attending the party he was throwing in honour of Jayalalitha on March 29 and that would be a meeting point for the two ladies to make a quick political deal.

Sonia Gandhi is, however, scheduled to be in Kerala on that day and hence the Congress managers are working out either change in her tour programme or better as they think would be a quiet meeting between her and Jayalalitha at any undisclosed place.

Former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda is believed to have already approached Jayalalitha at the instance of Sonia Gandhi to convince her that she cannot expect the Vajpayee government to dismiss the Karunanidhi Government after what happenned in Bihar and as such it is the opportune time for her to change sides. She has been reportedly assured that a new government at the Centre can be sympathatic to her in rescuing her and family from the court cases if nothing else.

BJP STAND: Meanwhile, BJP Vice-President Jagdish Prasad Mathur sought to affirm in a statement issued at the party’s Press briefing on Tuesday that the "subversive game" the Congress was playing would be "ill-fated" and it should better "desist from trying to destabilise the BJP-led government if it does not want to fall any further in public esteem."

Mathur, however, could not resist from admitting that the Congress is capable of "stopping to any level" to be back in power. "Bribing and manipulating its way to power is not new to the Congress—it is a past-master at the game of subverting parliamentary democracy in its pursuit of power at any cost," Mathur said in the statement.

"The Congrress is welcome to embark on a fishing expedition, but it will return empty-handed. The BJP and its allies stand firmly together, notwithstanding minor perceptional differences," Mathur added. END.