The Importance Of Being Brajesh
The Opposition and the Sangh Parivar launch an attack on the Prime Minister's Office by targeting the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister Brajesh Mishra. The Vajpayee camp finds itself fighting a grim political battle to retain credibility even as the Establishment tries to discredit the Tehelka allegations. An analysis.

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The Ways And Means Of Ranjan
Ranjan Bhattacharya's role as nursemaid to Atal Bihari Vajpayee gives the fun-loving foster son-in-law
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Congress' Coalition Flight Grounded
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plan to form an alliance just before the assembly elections in five states, may backfire.

Desperately Seeking loopholes
The Bharatiya Janata Party and Samata Party find discrepancies
in the charges levelled against them by Tehelka. But it's just details.

Nursery Of Hate
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Vroom Service
The four-stroke motorcycle overtakes middle-class India's greatest icon since the valve radio set, as sales of the doughty old scooter stagnate in spite of a spirited fightback.

George Cross
The FIR against Sonia Gandhi's private secretary is a plain corruption issue says the CBI. But, an embarrassed Congress complains of vendetta.

Nothing Official About It
The payment crisis is temporarily stemmed, but clandestine financing ticks like a time bomb.

COVER STORY: AICC SESSION

Saved By The Opposition's Overkill

The NDA meanders and blunders its way to an organised response to the scandal

It is something of a tired joke in Delhi's ever-buzzing political circles. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the line goes, will remain prime minister as long as Sonia Gandhi remains leader of the Opposition. Depending on how you interpret it, that is either a banal statement of fact or a most profound political message. This past week, the second reasoning seemed to have scored a minor victory.

By disrupting Parliament for eight straight days, it was said, the Congress had certainly made a political point. By going too far, however, it had also let the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) off the hook. The absence of a debate on the bribery scandal had kept the fissures within the ruling coalition, as well as the acute sense of embarrassment it was feeling, well hidden. In sum, the NDA had been gifted crucial time to recharge its batteries.

The NDA spent the first week after the tehelka.com revelations on the backfoot. Within the BJP itself, morale was low following the vivid and lurid images of Bangaru Laxman, the party president, receiving money. As the media had a field day speculating on intra-party and intra-Parivar squabbles, key leaders shied from speaking up for the Government.

Within the NDA, the Samata was in ferment, especially after George Fernandes quit. Prabhunath Singh and Raghunath Jha, habitually difficult Samata MPs, openly demanded the sack for Brajesh Mishra and N.K. Singh and a purging of the space around the prime minister. The move had the tacit approval of Jaya Jaitly, Samata's outgoing president and herself in the eye of the graft storm.

Saamna, the Shiv Sena's newspaper, carried an anti-PMO editorial. Later Sena chief Bal Thackeray was to delink himself from the views of the writer, Sanjay Raut. Of course, by then Sanjay Nirupam, Sena MP, had issued a suitably uncomfortable statement in Delhi. Meanwhile, Ramakrishna Hegde of the Janata Dal (U) had found his chance to call Fernandes a few names.

It was all very confusing and the NDA-a disparate conglomeration at the best of times-was putting up anything but a united face. Even Jana Krishnamurthy's largely expected confirmation as fulltime BJP president was, in the estimation of some newspapers, under threat. Rural Development Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu-who issued a strong denial, saying there was "no race, no face and no case"-was cited as a "strong" candidate.

When I&B Minister Sushma Swaraj's husband was asked if she was a contender, he is supposed to have stared quizzically and said, "Whatever for?" There was even talk of Dalit MPs forcing Bangaru's reinstatement. It may have been moonshine. Nevertheless, till the middle of the week the NDA was a clear also ran in the information game.

Operation Fightback had three broad components. First, organise the media offensive. An informal coordination committee was set up primarily to decide who would talk to which channel. Given her obvious advantage as I&B minister, Swaraj was put in charge.

Second, discredit the Tehelka tapes. Minister of State for Consumer Affairs Sreenivasa Prasad-the Samata MP who was supposed to have received Rs 2 lakh from the Tehelka undercover team at Fernandes' residence-told a news conference that he was out of town on the day of the alleged meeting. Official tour schedules were duly produced and a party investigation into how such tapes could be "doctored" was announced.

Third, talk tough, take the battle to the streets. Trinamool Congress' recalcitrant Mamata Banerjee was virtually told to get lost. After the foray at Delhi's Ram Lila grounds on March 25, NDA rallies are planned all over the country. Vajpayee, L.K. Advani and Fernandes are likely to be the main speakers. Finally, the Congress and the amorphous Third Front are being ridiculed. Says JD(U) spokesman Mohan Prakash on the formation of the Left-socialist People's Front, "It appears every third month as the third force under various brand names. And then it disappears." As for the Congress, its scandal-tainted past is being suitably evoked.

What's really happened is the campaign season for the five assembly elections in late April has begun a trifle early. What is in store for the NDA after the elections is, of course, quite another story.

-Farzand Ahmed and Ashok Malik

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