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LEADERS' CAMPAIGN Lucknow's A-Team Vajpayee re-election from Lucknow is not an issue. Who's doing what in the campaign is. By Ashok Malik and Subhash Mishra If you've never seen Lalji Tandon simply imagine a cross between Billy Bunter in a dhoti and Kushabhau Thakre's long-lost brother. It seems apt that Uttar Pradesh's urban development minister is Atal Bihari Vajpayee's campaign manager in Lucknow. A laidback attitude, a stake in the chikan wholesale trade, a (visibly generous) diet of khasta kachoris, jalebis and sugary-milky tea that is bountifully shared with everyone who visits him, preference for his family home in the old city's Chowk area -- Tandon, 65, in the words of a flunkey, epitomises "the city's Ganga-Jamuna tehzeeb (syncretic culture)".
If you were to visit the BJP office in Lucknow -- there is a separate two-storied structure devoted to Vajpayee's campaign -- you would find none of the austerity on display. Amid the atmosphere of an Indian wedding -- lights, music (Atal remixes), hustle and bustle -- Shiv Kumar, 60, tells you nothing has changed: "Whether it's a contest as an MP or prime minister, the work that goes into it is the same." Kumar along with Tandon and Vireshwar Dwivedi runs the committee to re-elect Vajpayee. If Kumar and Tandon perform the "complementary task" of monitoring constituency work for Vajpayee and planning his campaign, Dwivedi, 55, does the "field work". Part of Vajpayee's team, Dwivedi is "good with people". When Mohaana village (2,300 voters; on the outskirts of Lucknow city) announced a boycott of polls citing broken promises, bad roads, no health facilities and power cuts, Dwivedi wasn't ruffled: "I'll handle it. Mohaana will vote for Atalji." His success is uncertain but his confidence doesn't betray that. The Tandon team is virtually coterminous with the "Brahmin lobby" in the Uttar Pradesh BJP. This is a faction intractably oppon men, not very keen on public meetings." There are two cultures at work hosed to Chief Minister Kalyan Singh. This past week, after a dissident campaign office was opened in Lucknow, Kalyan and Tandon had to call a press conference to assure the faithful all was well. Even so, the discomfort between the old BJP and the new is apparent. To quote Tandon in another context, "Our leaders like Deen Dayal Upadhyaya were organisatiere; Vajpayee is the bridge. In some ways, the Lucknow seat represents a boring non-contest. Vajpayee got over 50 per cent of the vote in the three previous elections and this time the only real question is if he will cross 60 per cent. Two things strike you though. One, the supreme certitude of Karan Singh, the Congress candidate: "There is discontent seething against the BJP and Atalji. He has peaked ... This is the season of change." Two, the abundance of attention being paid to what must be the safest BJP seat in the country. Madan Lal Khurana and H.S. Balli arrive from Delhi with a jatha of Muslims and Sikhs. The All-India Muslim Conference, headed by Haji Ahmed Shakil -- a city builder who is, coincidentally, close to the urban development minister -- calls a meeting to "thank Vajpayee for burying all controversial issues and making the BJP a secular party". Sushma Swaraj, fresh from Bellary, plans only one meeting in Amethi but five in Lucknow. Her lines are trenchant -- "What sort of Sanskrit scholar is Karan Singh? He knows only two mantras: Farooqam sharanam gacchami and Soniam sharanam gacchami (I take refuge in Farooq Abdullah, I take refuge in Sonia)" -- but shouldn't they have been reserved for a stronger opponent? Perhaps in a prime ministerial constituency people invest effort not for polling day but for a dividend afterwards. |
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Meeting Tandon is like
coming into contact with a walking-talking time machine. He doesn't refer to Vajpayee's
victories from Lucknow in 1991, 1996 and 1998. Instead, he takes you back to the 1950s,
when Vajpayee stood from Lucknow in 1953, 1957 and then in 1962, losing to the Congress'
Pulin Bihari Banerjee the first couple of times and to V.K. Dhawan in the third. Nobody
remembers those winners but Tandon has a sharp recollection of the earlier Vajpayee
campaigns: "Congress ke sab sansadhan the. Hamare paas kuchh nahin. Cycle ke
jaloos nikale gaye the, ikka pe loudspeaker lagaya jata tha (Congress had the
resources, we had nothing. There were cycle processions, loudspeakers fitted to
horse-carts)."