June 8, 1998

The BJP's aggressive stance has forced the party to review its earlier resolve to sit it out in the Opposition.

By Harish Gupta

One of the virtues of televised coverage of parliamentary proceedings is the ringside view it provides of shifting political alignments. Last week, the CPI(M)'s voluble Somnath Chatterjee was berating the BJP-led Government's nuclear policy when news of Pakistan's tests filtered through. As chaos reigned in the Lok Sabha, the Congress Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman K. Natwar Singh quietly inveigled himself into an adjoining seat in the Opposition front benches. Then, as Chatterjee's speech got angrier and angrier, Singh was seen nodding furiously in agreement. Detecting this unlikely meeting of the minds, Chatterjee even made a complimentary reference or two to Singh's own intervention the previous day.

Some 10 weeks ago, when Sonia Gandhi effected a silent coup against Sitaram Kesri and catapulted herself to the Congress president's chair, a visible Congress-CPI(M) entente would have been unimaginable. Five nuclear blasts and Atal Bihari Vajpayee's growing confidence later, "dynasty" has ceased to be a pejorative term in non-Congress, opposition circles. Just when the saffron ranks are dreaming of a five-year term for Vajpayee, the Congress is clawing its way back into reckoning. The "constructive cooperation" offered by the Congress to the Vajpayee regime is slowly yielding way to the Opposition's "unconditional support" to the Congress for Operation Topple. Says a CPI(M) Central Committee member grudgingly: "We hate her (Sonia) and were working to confine the dynasty to the four walls of 10 Janpath. But we see the emergence of a Germany of the '30s. We find the same passions that Hitler aroused. We have no choice now".

The turnaround has been effected without fanfare. First, she broke the ice with former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda and agreed in principle to a tactical understanding against the Lok Shakti-BJP alliance in Karnataka. Next, she kept up contact with emissaries of Mulayam Singh Yadav for a possible deal in Uttar Pradesh. Subsequently, to placate Laloo Prasad Yadav, whose heart was with the ousted Kesri, she ordered the state Congress not to withdraw support to the Rabri Devi Government in Bihar.

Predictably, a key figure behind these initiatives is Janata Party chief Subramanian Swamy, who has sworn revenge against Vajpayee for his refusal to accommodate him in the Cabinet. Swamy has held at least five meetings with Sonia in pursuit of his plan to topple the BJP. Equating Vajpayee with Duryodhan, who refused to concede even a single village to the Pandavas, Swamy is unrelenting: "We did not demand his kingdom. But he was unwilling to shed even one portfolio. Now he must pay the price for his mistimed, ill-advised and reckless adventurism."

At the core of Swamy's initiative is a plan to get the AIADMK supremo J. Jayalalitha to cross over with her 26 MPs. If Jayalalitha obliges -- and this is still a big "if" given her antipathy to Sonia -- and Om Prakash Chautala is placated with a promise to destabilise the Bansi Lal Government in Haryana, the Congress reckons it will have the support of at least 285 MPs, giving it a clear majority in the Lok Sabha. Says Congress spokesman Ajit Jogi: "We agreed to give constructive cooperation to the BJP Government. We will take no initiative to destabilise it. But we cannot condone adventurism. If the present set-up goes, we will see that a secular government replaces it." Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sharad Pawar is equally forthright: "The bomb cannot sustain the Government. It is a different matter that Vajpayee may survive for a few more months, if not weeks." However, Pawar says there are no plans to bring a no-confidence motion in the first half of the budget session. The second half is another matter.

Ironically for Vajpayee, it is the BJP's aggressive nationalism that has forced the Congress to review its earlier plan of sitting it out in the opposition, at least for a year. To former party vice-president Jitendra Prasada, "The bomb has not changed anything for the common man. Inflation is up, the rupee is sliding and the gangrape in Rajasthan has overshadowed Pokhran." To Sonia, however, it is the BJP's hawkish foreign policy that has contributed to the break. At her first meeting with the 14-member parliamentary strategy committee, she expressed grave concern over Home Minister L.K. Advani's new Kashmir policy. When an MP suggested that Advani's "proactive" policy was a smokescreen for "hot pursuit" into Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, the Congress president went a step further. She suggested that the BJP was re-opening the Kashmir issue to whip up passions. "They can do anything. They are taking the country towards a war," she is said to have told the committee.

For the moment, however, Sonia has given her party no clue as to when she intends going in for the kill or whether she intends giving Vajpayee an opportunity of addressing the nation from the Red Fort on August 15. But few can fail to notice the extra bounce in her step and the fact that she is interacting more easily these days. Even smiling more. Her happiness could be based on growing expectations of a return to Race Course road.

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