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BJP Heartland HeadachesNow stable at the Centre the party leadership gets down to tackling the problems in Uttar Pradesh and planning for victory in Bihar. By Saba Naqvi Bhaumik The BJP is no longer preoccupied with the survival of the A.B. Vajpayee Government. The concerns now are closer to the ground, the recovery and growth of the party in its traditional bastion, the Hindi heartland. Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are top of the mind in Delhi. The BJP's national executive which met in the capital's Parliament House annexe last week may have expressed suitable anguish over the Orissa cyclone, slept through a speech by party President Kushabhau Thakre and spent just the right amount of time on each state report. But everyone knew the real business at hand was analysing why the BJP received such a drubbing in Uttar Pradesh and whether Chief Minister Kalyan Singh should stay or go. Item No. 2 on the agenda was finalising the poll strategy for Bihar where the BJP-JD(U) alliance is in sniffing distance of victory in the assembly elections early next year. That is why the views of Sushil Modi, leader of the opposition in the Bihar Assembly, were significant. Modi told the party leadership that removing a backward caste leader like Kalyan in Uttar Pradesh would have a direct fallout in Bihar where they are attempting to battle a beleaguered but yet entrenched OBC phenomenon like Laloo Prasad Yadav. "Our opponents will then say the BJP has axed a backward," he explains. "It is anti-OBC." The other point Modi made was that harsh economic measures like the recent hike in diesel prices should not be taken before assembly polls. There could be another significant change before the Bihar polls. At the insistence of both the BJP and allies like JD(U) and Trinamool Congress, the three-member Election Commission (EC) -- there is one vacancy at present -- may be expanded to five. The idea is to have a "friendlier" EC. The BJP-JD(U) alliance is hoping that the caste arithmetic it put together for the Lok Sabha polls will reap rich dividends in the Bihar Assembly. The problem is that the alliance has three chief ministerial candidates -- Modi from the BJP which won 23 Lok Sabha seats from Bihar against the JD(U))'s 21; the JD(U)'s Kurmi leader Nitish Kumar; and Dalit hero Ram Vilas Paswan. The immediate solution is to fight with a team of leaders. "Projecting one may alienate the caste backing of the others," says Modi. "Let every community believe their man may be chief minister." But there are signals emanating from the BJP that suggest that post-polls, Paswan may emerge as the consensus candidate. Explains a BJP minister: "Making a Dalit the chief minister has great symbolism." The problem lies in convincing Nitish Kumar, the architect of the Samata Party which has been reborn as JD(U). He would naturally be miffed at a late-comer like Paswan pipping him to the post he has been eyeing for so long. Modi on the other hand is a long-distance runner and has the temperament to accept a compromise candidate, particularly if that results in the BJP co-opting Paswan and making him more their man than the JD(U)'s. An analysis of the election results in Bihar has revealed that Paswan's incremental vote has made the difference between victory and defeat in several closely contested seats. While solutions are in sight in Bihar, the Uttar Pradesh mess is difficult to untangle. A large section of MLAs and party heavyweights in Uttar Pradesh are clear that Kalyan must go. The criticism borders on the crude. The source of his problems, says a state leader, is "launda aur laundi". The reference is to his son Rajbir Singh who orders bureaucrats around and has been allotted a petrol pump in Ghaziabad, and the controversial corporator Kusum Rai, the lady the chief minister is said to be close to and who has become an extra-constitutional authority in Lucknow. Kalyan's trump card is his caste and the fact that there is no replacement for him in a state where assembly polls are due in two years. If he is removed he will remain in the BJP but play the game of internal sabotage which his protege Sakshi Maharaj did so successfully during the Lok Sabha polls. The idea of Kalyan having an understanding with Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav sends jitters down the BJP's spine. A Kalyan-Mulayam pact would be a formidable backward-Muslim coalition. With the Dalits behind the Bahujan Samaj Party and the upper castes veering towards the Congress, the BJP would be left with a shattered vote bank. But with large numbers of MLAs and sections of the party leadership baying for his blood, it is a Catch-22 situation. Both in the state and at the national executive, the pro- and anti-Kalyan lobbies are divided along caste lines. Murli Manohar Joshi and Vajpayee believe the man should go. Never one for a direct confrontation, Vajpayee made a tangential reference to Kalyan and the Uttar Pradesh debacle at the meet when he said, "Advani used to say we will get 200 seats. That did not happen ..." It is no secret that Vajpayee's man in his constituency Lucknow is Lalji Tandon, Kalyan's bete noire. There is a great deal of carping against Tandon's machinations as well. "Here is a man without any base who has misled Atalji and aggravated the problems with Kalyan," says a state leader. Without directly attacking Kalyan, state unit President Rajnath Singh described the debacle in Uttar Pradesh as "unexpected and unimaginable". Kalyan himself did not speak at the meet but his loyalists were not happy with the tone adopted by those who did. Vindabasini Kumar, Kalyan loyalist and national executive member, does not mince words: "Kalyan has made mistakes. But what will be left without him?" Like all problems in the BJP, the matter has landed in the lap of Home Minister L.K. Advani. General Secretary K.N. Govindacharya who is in charge of Uttar Pradesh proved no match for the mess and is in the US, attending victory celebrations organised by the Overseas Friends of the BJP. Advani is doing all the hard talking. Kalyan has always been an Advani man, groomed by the BJP's main strategist. Yet, Advani is livid at the sabotage games played by Kalyan. It is not an easy decision for him. He will get together with Vajpayee and Thakre and consult the RSS before pronouncing the final verdict on Kalyan. Till then the chief minister has some breathing time. It may be a slow movement. The experienced BJP leadership knows that Uttar Pradesh politics has the tendency to trigger a chain reaction that can make even the most stable government in Delhi appear shaky. |
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