Ram's Laxman
Vajpayee's every pronouncement is fast becoming a new theme song of the BJP, reaffirming his grip over the party and the NDA. Quite a change for the party that once claimed that personality cult was the prerogative of the Congress.

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THE NATION: BJP

Ram's Laxman

In a departure from the past, Vajpayee's word becomes the party's command

By Farzand Ahmed

At the BJP headquarters on Delhi's Ashoka Road, the buzz is that Ram's party has now entered the Ram-Laxman era with Laxman diligently carrying out the wishes of Ram without any ifs and buts.

BJP leaders are sending out the signal that Vajpayee is above criticism not only within the party but the entire NDA

The black humour isn't misplaced. Since Bangaru Laxman was chosen the BJP chief last August, he has been faithfully parroting Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. So faithfully that there is a growing impression both within and outside the party that the BJP and Vajpayee are synonymous. If Vajpayee says the Ayodhya movement was an expression of the "national sentiment", the party follows a me-too assertion comparing those heady days with the "freedom movement led by Mahatma Gandhi". But when an apparently agonised Vajpayee muses from Kumarakom that "the wrongs of the medieval past cannot be righted by a similar wrong in modern times", the party's Laxman chips in to say, "If some partymen feel that Ayodhya is the issue, I don't think they are correct." Quite forgetting his fortnight-old claim that the Ram mandir would be built at the disputed spot because "national sentiment" so decreed.

Vajpayee's every pronouncement is fast becoming a new theme song of the BJP. When Vajpayee, fresh from his Kerala retreat, asked Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha to prepare a growth-oriented budget with a rural thrust, the party quickly focused on agriculture. It adopted a three-page resolution at the National Executive meeting on January 4 and forwarded 13 proposals to the Government to "extend economic reforms measures to the agriculture sector". Besides, it also set up a panel headed by former Rajasthan chief minister Bhairon Singh Shekhawat to study the subject. And when Vajpayee asked the National Executive to spread the good word, the party shed its misgivings and set up committees to preach liberalisation to the masses. Says BJP economics cell convener Jagdish Shettigar: "Policies are laid down in manifestoes. The Government is implementing them."

Shettigar appears to have got the sequence wrong. From the party calling the shots, it's the Government that is now setting the BJP agenda. After Vajpayee told the Nagpur session of the National Council that "I want Laxman to draw a Laxman-rekha as politics can be done only up to a limit", the party president responded, "I want to make it clear that indiscipline will not be tolerated. We will crush it before it raises its head." Home Minister L.K. Advani too went along. He reminded the National Council: "We can't afford the luxury of criticising the Government as we did in the past, publicly". This mantra was taken to such heights that even an innocuous line on rolling back the diesel price hike was deleted from the final economic resolution last week.

To cap it all, former MP J.K. Jain was dropped from the National Executive after he sent a legal notice to Vajpayee and his Principal Secretary Brajesh Mishra following a public wrangle over an alleged adverse report on him by an intelligence agency. Coming on the heels of former general secretary K.N. Govindacharya's departure on forced study leave, the signal to the faithful is clear: the prime minister is above criticism. Laxman hinted that this should be the norm not only for the BJP but the entire NDA. "I am confident our partners will carry on the good work, conforming to the coalition dharma," he told the National Executive. A day earlier, he told some ministers: "Enough is enough. We have to get moving."

However, senior party Vice-President and spokesperson K. Jana Krishnamurthy laughed at the suggestions that the BJP had become Vajpayee's party. "In parliamentary democracy no party, specially the ruling party, can afford to differ from the government. This is a political norm followed everywhere," he said, adding that the erstwhile Jan Sangh and then the BJP had been seeking Vajpayee's "guidance"right from 1968 after the death of Deendayal Upadhyay. "In the 1999 Lok Sabha polls, the party took a conscious decision to go to the voters as the NDA, placed before them the NDA agenda and then publicly decided the party has no agenda except the NDA's."

That's another way of saying that for the BJP, the only voice that now matters is the voice of the leader. Quite a change for an organisation that once claimed that a personality cult was the prerogative of the Congress.

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