Uttar Pradesh
Advantage BJP

The United Front is at odds over Article 356. The Congress is smarting from defections in the state. In the end, BJP is sitting pretty: in power in Lucknow, its untouchablity eroded and looking to Delhi.

By Swapan Das Gupta and Saba Naqvi Bhaumik

By the evening of last Wednesday, Delhi's Raisina Hill was beginning to resemble a carnival. Outside the iron gates of Rashtrapati Bhavan the luminaries of India's largest parliamentary group and the ruling party in Uttar Pradesh sat on dharna, the ubiquitous television cameras recording their every movement. BJP President L.K. Advani was there looking sombre and elated in turn; Murli Manohar Joshi was there dressed just so; saffron-robed Uma Bharati was there keeping the 222 MLAs from Uttar Pradesh vastly amused with her rustic ditties; Vasundhara Raje Scindia was there looking every bit a Rapunzel in green; Pramod Mahajan was there, a walking advertisement for the Motorola cell phone; Rajasthan Chief Minister Bhairon Singh Shekhawat was fleetingly there looking a bit under the weather after some dubious jalebis in Lucknow the previous day; and Delhi Chief Minister Sahib Singh Verma was there supervising the eating arrangements. It was the time for every good saffron to come to the aid of the party.

Underneath the bonhomie, the BJP top brass was nervous. For public consumption, Advani maintained that it was a win-win situation all the way. If Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kalyan Singh was allowed to continue -- having proved his majority the previous afternoon -- it would expose the perfidy of the United Front (UF) Government at the Centre. Alternatively, if the I.K. Gujral Government succeeded in bamboozling the President of India into imposing Central rule in Uttar Pradesh, it would give the BJP a moral platform to campaign for the "defence of democracy". However, deep within, Advani knew that this was not one of those occasions when the BJP could brag it had laddoos in both hands.

Having cobbled together a quick-fire majority by splitting the Congress, the Janata Dal (JD) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Kalyan unwittingly brought traditional adversaries Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati together. With Congress President Sitaram Kesri waiting in the wings to cement a new anti-BJP combination in the state, the saffron camp knew that the imposition of President's rule would be crippling for the party. If the Assembly was kept under suspension, it would become impossible to keep the flock of defectors together. With an ever-obliging Governor Romesh Bhandari ready to play facilitator, even a brief spell of President's rule would make it easy for Kesri to set in motion the plan to install a Congress chief minister, with the backing of the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the BSP. It was this scheme that Kesri discussed with Gujral on October 20, the day Mayawati pulled the rug from under the BJP. Gujral endorsed Kesri's enterprise but felt it was best to let Kalyan fall on the floor of the House. It was an act of propriety that proved politically counter-productive.

Nor was the BJP charmed by the prospect of assembly dissolution and fresh election. In an electorate sharply divided along caste lines, it would have proved difficult for the BJP to overtake a Congress-BSP-SP alliance. In the 1996 assembly election, for example, the BJP emerged as the single-largest party with 32.7 per cent of the votes, a nominal decline from the 33 per cent it polled during the Lok Sabha election earlier that year. This was significantly lower than the combined vote of the UF parties (29.4 per cent) and the BSP-Congress alliance (27.8 per cent). Moreover, the BJP's traditional supporters were angry with the party for meekly acquiescing in Mayawati's aggressive Ambedkarite politics. To get the party back on the tracks, Kalyan needed a sustained spell in government. A defeat in Uttar Pradesh -- the home turf of BJP's prime minister-in-waiting A.B. Vajpayee -- would dash all prospects of the party making it to Delhi.

For the BJP, Uttar Pradesh was a do-or-die matter. Yet, it was one thing for Kalyan to manage a victory in the Assembly, quite another to enjoy the fruit. The ball was in the UF's court where a weak Gujral was vulnerable to pressures from a belligerent Mulayam and an angry Kesri. "We are the ones who have been fighting the BJP while everybody else has been sitting pretty in Delhi," barked Mulayam at his UF colleagues during a cabinet meeting. "Now the least you can do is to support us." On his part, Kesri was equally adamant that Kalyan must be dismissed. "Constitutional matter to ham ko nahin malum. Ye decision political hai. (I am not concerned with constitutional implications. It should be a political decision)," shrieked Kesri at three UF ministers who met him.

The BJP pulled all stops out to prevent Kalyan's dismissal. On Tuesday evening, a BJP delegation led by Advani called on the President. The BJP chief was at his persuasive best. "You are aware that any presidential proclamation will be challenged in the courts where it will not stand up to scrutiny," he said. Arguing that a judicial indictment would reflect poorly on the institution of the presidency, particularly the implied suggestion of non-application of mind, he appealed to President K.R. Narayanan to ask the Government to refer the matter to the chief justice of the Supreme Court before taking a decision. He then added a personal touch: "This is the first case of Article 356 to come to you. It is also the most feeble case. You should do what is right." The President sat silent, but it was clear that Advani had struck a chord somewhere.

To add to the pressure, Vajpayee, in the middle of a tour of the Gulf countries, telephoned Gujral at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, just 30 minutes before the third cabinet meeting. "Please act with courage," he told Gujral firmly. "This is your big test. It's an opportunity to uphold the honour and dignity of the prime minister's office. If you succumb to pressure, the people will lose all faith in democracy and a situation will be created in which it will be impossible for the Lok Sabha to function." It was advice laced with threat and Gujral could only respond with a risque joke.

As a last desperate recourse, the BJP toyed with the possibility of securing the resignation of all its 160 Lok Sabha members. This was deliberately leaked to the UF parties to convey the impression that the party would not take Kalyan's dismissal lying down. However, en masse resignation was never seriously considered. Advani's ultimate weapon was an indefinite fast, along the lines of the fast undertaken by Morarji Desai in 1975 to force the downfall of the Chimanbhai Patel government in Gujarat.

Luckily it never came to that. In its campaign to prevent President's rule, the BJP found help from three most unlikely quarters. Bolstered by categorical advice from Advocate General Ashok Desai, the President did what was hitherto considered unthinkable: he returned the advice of the Cabinet for reconsideration. It unnerved the UF and momentarily created the possibility of a rift between the executive and the presidency.

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