The Nation: BJP; State of Despair

India Today
October 19,1998

BJP
State Of Despair

With the BJP's election prospect bleak in Delhi and Rajasthan, the Vajpayee government's problems are further compounded by demanding allies.

By Harinder Baweja

For many years, K.L. Sharma has been considered by the BJP as the ideal spokesman in times of trouble. Completely unflappable and with a permanent smile on his face, Sharma's great advantage was that he said little and was never provoked. When he did say something meaningful it could be taken as a statement of intent. So it was last Thursday afternoon when he blandly announced that Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's long-awaited Cabinet expansion would take place two days later, notwithstanding the "inconclusive" meeting with Jayalalitha.

It was to prove the most short-lived assertion of optimism. Six hours later, a terse statement from Race Course Road announced that Vajpayee had deferred the expansion. Buffeted by competitive and impossible demands from the Akalis, the ubiquitous Jayalalitha and lesser constituents of the fractious coalition, Vajpayee threw up his arms in despair. If he had conceded the demands of everyone, he would have ended up with a 93-strong ministry.

The loss of face couldn't have come at a worse time for the BJP. With assembly elections slated in Delhi, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh on November 25, the BJP is limping with its back to the wall. The elections are the first real political test for the Vajpayee Government, especially in Delhi and Rajasthan where the BJP has to defend its governments. Internal polls commissioned by the party's central office do not even give them a fighting chance. But even as the BJP flounders for an effective strategy, it finds itself in the midst of fire-fighting operations.

The aborted cabinet expansion and the setting up of a three-member committee headed by Defence Minister George Fernandes to look into the Akali demand of not including Udham Singh Nagar in the proposed hill state of Vananchal are direct fallouts of the pre-poll pressure being put on the Centre. The Udham Singh Nagar proposal is not new as Akalis had made noises earlier. But if they repeated it and linked it to the withdrawal of support, it is only because they realised this was the right time for concessions.

G.S. Tohra, the strident Akali politician, egged on Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal to drive a hard bargain. And in the meeting that they finally had with Vajpayee, the prime minister reportedly looked at Tohra and asked him what his demands were. While the two sides wasted little time in agreeing to the setting up of the committee, more time was spent on extracting concessions. It was clear that the Akalis, who now envisage a role for themselves outside the state, wanted seats in Delhi and Rajasthan.

This creates a problem for the Government. As a senior BJP leader put it, "This opens the floodgates. Already the Shiv Sena is demanding seats in Delhi and the Samata Party wants its share in Rajasthan." The demand is already gaining ground. Also in line is Lok Dal's Om Prakash Chautala who is looking for a seat-sharing arrangement in Rajasthan.

It isn't just the allies who are being troublesome. Vajpayee is also facing opposition from within, for despite himself, BJP President Khushabau Thakre and Home Minister L.K. Advani agreeing that they need to replace Sahib Singh as Delhi's chief minister, there is considerable resistance to the move. Few in the party differ that with the hike in onion prices and the water, electricity and dropsy crises that Delhi has just been through, Singh's face is hardly the one that can be projected in the forthcoming elections. Yet, if Singh is to be replaced it would be tantamount to the BJP conceding defeat even before the electoral battle.

In Rajasthan too, it is only a bleak picture that stares BJP's General Secretary K.N. Govindacharya in the face each time he looks at the election statistics: 47 chronically bad seats that the party lost in the last assembly elections and 43 seats it lost by around 5,000 votes. In the face of a strong anti-incumbency factor-despite the nuclear tests having taken place in the soils of Rajasthan-the party is going to the polls with the only issue that it can think of: development.

Madhya Pradesh is the only state where the anti-incumbency factor is working in the BJP's favour and that is the last of Vajpayee's worries. Still smarting from the snub it received on the Bihar issue after the President returned the Cabinet's recommendation, the party, as a BJP general secretary concedes, is faced with an image problem. A problem that can hardly ease after the election results are announced.

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