NEW DELHI, May 2: India’s embattled ruling coalition did an about-face on Thursday, saying it would back an opposition motion in Rajya Sabha (parliament’s upper house) to express anguish over communal violence in Gujarat.

“We have never said we are absolved of our responsibility,” Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh said in the house. “The government shares the anguish expressed in the motion.”

The move, which looked like a bid to stave off defeat for lack of sufficient numbers to crush the motion, followed a bruising attack by some of the coalition’s own allies and the opposition in a Wednesday debate on an earlier censure motion.

The censure motion in the Lok Sabha (lower house) targeted the government for failing to stop the communal violence, which has claimed 910 lives, mostly Muslim.

The ruling coalition crushed the lower house motion thanks to its healthy majority.

But the coalition had faced certain defeat in the upper house, where it is in a minority, even though the vote was not a confidence motion and could not have toppled the government.

With Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s 19-member coalition joining the opposition in voicing anguish over the bloodshed, it was not known immediately whether there would be a vote on the motion.

Critics kept up the pressure on the government.

“The leadership in Gujarat has lost its moral authority to provide impartial governance in the state,” said Alladi Rajkumar, leader of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), the coalition’s largest supporter.—Reuters