UTTAR PRADESH
Lonely at the Top

Kalyan Singh faces hostility within and outside his party as he tackles corruption and the law and order situation.

By Subhash Mishra

Hours after replacing the Bahujan Samaj Party's (BSP) Mayawati as the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Kalyan Singh summoned the state police chief Shri Ram Arun and a senior Vigilance Department officer to his 2 Mall Avenue residence. His orders were specific: the police chief was told that the new

Government would brook no nonsense on the law and order situation in the state. To the Vigilance Department, he gave an unambiguous directive: reopen all pending files of corrupt civil servants.

With these, Singh had spelt out his agenda for the next six months. He has no grandiose visions of putting back on the rails a state rapidly slipping into economic and industrial oblivion. "This is a short-term government and we have to aim at short-term achievements," says Singh. "In six months, my Government can neither enhance the agricultural growth rate nor can it set up infrastructure and big industries. What I intend to do is score on two fronts -- combating crime and corruption."

Mayawati too had her priorities but they had little in common with Singh's. One of them was the implementation -- almost misuse -- of the Uttar Pradesh Dalit Act. On September 22, a day after he took over, Singh issued a government order aimed at preventing the misapplication of the controversial Act. It was a decision that brought him into direct conflict not only with Mayawati -- whose government had enacted the legislation -- but also his own party leaders who had given the undertaking to the BSP that no decision of the outgoing government would be reversed.

Singh then set his eyes on the bureaucracy and the task of purging it of controversial civil servants. Many of the Mayawati favourites found themselves in the cold as Singh inducted those with proven track records. Rajiv Ratan Shah was named the new principal secretary in the Home Department. Obviously, Singh had considered Shah's deft handling of the 1980 Aligarh communal riots in appointing him to the post. D.K. Mittal, another senior officer who had come in for praise from the World Bank for his work in rural development, was posted as the managing director of the Land Reclamation Corporation. Anil Swarup, the new information secretary, who has the reputation of an honest civil servant; was victimised by Mayawati for refusing to condone the misdeeds of the state jail minister. Swarup and Mittal have also been active members of the anti-corruption brigade in the ias Association and were instrumental in organising the secret internal ballot that identified the most corrupt officers in the state administration last year.

Having effected his "right man for right post" formula, Singh has now vowed to weed out the "black sheep" from the bureaucracy. He began by suspending two officers -- Lalit Varma and R.K. Sharma, accused in the multi-crore rupee Ayurveda scam -- last Wednesday. Further action is likely because in the past five years, in which the state saw several changes in government besides long spells of President's rule, many bureaucrats have been accused of corruption. A few others were involved in the land scandal in Noida while P.N. Mishra, director of the Mandi Parishad, was charged with defrauding it.

Singh's moves have, however, created a problem for his party. Earlier, the BJP had only to contend with Mayawati. Now it has Singh to control too. The party is not too keen on a course of action independent of its coalition partner's participation. But the chief minister had made it clear, even before he took the oath of office, that he would not "dance to the tune of others". His sentiments were clearly influenced by the humiliation the Kanshi Ram-Mayawati duo heaped on the then chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav during the Samajwadi Party-BSP coalition in 1993. The reality, therefore, is that Singh counts not only the BSP as his friends-as-foes, but also ministers from his own party. As it is, PWD Minister Kalraj Mishra and Urban Development Minister Lalji Tandon -- both once in the race for the chief ministership -- are reported to be taking their troubles to the BSP leader (see box).

Mayawati, who has no love lost for Singh, has found the simmering tensions in the BJP a handy weapon with which to hit back at the incumbent. In typical style, she convened a press conference to suggest that the chief minister change his name to Kalyan Singh Yadav -- for having given a fillip to backward and upper caste interests by issuing the government order on the Dalit Act. And though the Government has been in of-fice for barely a week, she has more than once threatened to pull out her party's 67 MLAs from the alliance, which has 241 members in a House of 425.

But Singh appears undeterred. The fact that he is still going ahead with effecting changes in the administrative set up is perhaps indicative that Singh is prepared for more acrimonious times. The first rumble was heard on September 24 when Culture and Sports Minister Hari Krishna Srivastava of the BSP resigned from the Singh cabinet. Srivastava, social welfare minister in Mayawati's cabinet, was peeved that Singh had allocated a less important portfolio to him in the new ministry. Singh has taken serious note of charges of illegal land allotment to the Bahujan Samaj Foundation in Noida and a multi-crore rupee fraud in the fire services wing of the state police during Mayawati's regime and has asked the concerned secretaries for the relevant files. A number of ias and ips officers close to Mayawati are believed to be involved; action taken against them is sure to have its repercussions on BJP-BSP ties.

Sandwiched between hostile friends and unfriendly partners, Singh has to depend on a handpicked team of honest and efficient administrators. For the moment, he may benefit by ploughing a lonely furrow. But the moot point is: how long will the BJP sit back and allow Singh the latitude in running the state independently?

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