The political fallout

The expose churns up the country's politics on the eve of a round of Assembly elections.

IN a fortnight of relentless battles after the seismic upheaval of the Tehelka tapes, the principal political formations on the national political scene seemingly fought themselves to a stalemate. To the extent that it ever had one after three years of i nept governance, the multi-party coalition at the Centre had lost its moral sheen. The twin planks of "good governance" and "clean administration", which had been fashioned for deployment in the Assembly elections in four States and a Union Territory in May, now elicit only derisive laughter.

At the same time, the Congress(I) has shed its early obduracy and effected a strategic shift in favour of coalition politics. There have been some efforts by party spokespersons to argue that this is a pragmatic decision occasioned by the current pattern of the composition of the Lok Sabha. Other insiders, though, see it as an irreversible change, since a more accommodating attitude to smaller parties may be essential for a party whose organisational apparatus in crucial States has been reduced to tatte rs.

Potential partners of the main Opposition party, however, remain sceptical about the quality of its leadership. Elements of the erstwhile United Front, which have stayed free of other political commitments during the phase of disintegration of "third for ce politics", have renewed their effort to nurture an alternative to the Congress(I) and the Bharatiya Janata Party. The newly floated Peoples' Front (alternately called Lok Morcha or Quami Morcha depending on linguistic preference), will have all the fo ur major Left parties among its constituents. It will be led by Communist Party of India (Marxist) veteran Jyoti Basu, and Mulayam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party will be the convener. The Janata Dal (Secular), seeking to halt a rapid erosion in polit ical fortunes, has come on board, offering the P.F. a degree of geographical diversity. The P.F., however, is far from united in its attitudes towards the Congress(I). And Laloo Prasad Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal has opted to stay out of the P.F. since it is already in alliance with the Congress(I) in Bihar.

The ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) at the Centre has suffered serious attrition within its ranks. An important constituent, Mamata Banerjee's Trinamul Congress, bolted rather than risk the opprobrium of association with a discredited coalition when crucial Assembly elections in West Bengal are imminent.

Another NDA partner, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu, also has to run the gauntlet of State Assembly elections within the next month-and-a-half. But it has seemingly opted for a damage limitation strategy that stops short of parting company w ith the coalition. Having established its complete pre-eminence in the seat-sharing formula for Tamil Nadu, the DMK can seek to distance itself from the sordid goings-on in the Defence Ministry. It would have a delicate balancing act to perform, since th e allegations of corruption against its principal rival, Jayalalitha's AIADMK, will be a major plank on which it will fashion an election strategy. Crucially, when the NDA held its "unity rally" in New Delhi on March 25, the DMK chose not to send a repre sentative.

The withdrawal of the Trinamul Congress, which comes shortly after the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) pulled out of the NDA, considerably increases the parliamentary vulnerability of the Vajpayee government. With the core membership of the NDA now holding o nly 262 seats in the Lok Sabha, the Ministry is more than ever dependent on the external sustenance rendered by the Telugu Desam Party. And while the TDP, which comfortably won a five-year term in 1999, may not have any immediate reason to distance itsel f from the NDA, it has greatly expanded its influence over key decisions.

In varying degrees, the aftermath of the Tehelka revelations has contributed to the growing clout of even the smallest constituents of the NDA. Though the NDA still stands after the storms unleashed by the tapes, the next outbreak of dissidence within th e Ministry - even over issues of policy - could well prove terminal. The unstable balance of power within the BJP and the prickly clash of egos within the Samata Party could also pose a challenge to its survival.

The day the Tehelka tapes became public, the Union Cabinet met in an environment of confusion and disarray. Defence Minister George Fernandes, as the obvious focus of attention, had a dual strategy of relieving the pressure that was building up on him. O n the one hand he offered to resign if that would make the job of the Ministry any easier. But on the other, he urged that a counter-offensive might bring greater political rewards. With Vajpayee tending to tilt towards him, Fernandes retained his job. T he Cabinet finally came out with the rather vapid formulation that it was aware of the Tehelka tapes and would spare no efforts to arrive at the truth behind them - none of the guilty would be spared and no innocent person's reputation would be unfairly tarnished.

BJP president Bangaru Laxman, for his part, responded to public outrage over images of him accepting wads of notes, with a bland disavowal of wrongdoing. It was common for the president of the party to receive such donations, he said, and his entrapment in the act suggested a deeper political conspiracy.

Vajpayee reportedly left the Cabinet meeting that was under way to have a quiet word with Laxman. The instructions were clear: Laxman was to hand in his resignation to the BJP's then senior vice-president Jana Krishnamurthy. Yet the issue was far from cl inched. Hints soon came from quarters close to the BJP president about a faction within the party that was working against Dalit interests. The Prime Minister then swiftly despatched an aide to secure Laxman's letter of resignation.

Captured in no less self-incriminating an act by the Tehelka cameras, Samata Party president Jaya Jaitley had meanwhile made herself scarce. She emerged the following day with a spirited denial that she had either accepted any money or committed any irre gularity.

As public indignation grew, so seemingly did the determination to brazen out the crisis. On May 14, the leaders of the NDA's main constituents met to reaffirm their faith in Vajpayee's leadership. In an ostentatious display of unity, Commerce Minister Mu rasoli Maran of the DMK briefed the media after the meeting and waved away any suggestion that Fernandes should resign.

A significant absence at the NDA meeting was that of Mamata Banerjee, who had only that day sent a communication to the Prime Minister urging that Fernandes' reported offer of resignation be accepted. As she prepared for a meeting with Vajpayee the follo wing day, her party spokesman Sudeep Bandopadhyay was laying the ground for a dramatic parting of ways. "Trinamul," he said, meant "grassroots" and the party needed to be true to its name. Clearly, in the immediate aftermath of the Tehelka revelations, M amata Banerjee had begun to grapple with the need for certain hard decisions if her party were to continue to be a significant presence in the politics of West Bengal.

Mamata Banerjee failed to win the necessary reassurance from the Prime Minister. Later in the day, the Trinamul Congress leadership met in an emergency session and decided to pull out of the NDA. Mamata Banerjee sent in her resignation as Union Railway M inister, and the only other Trinamul Congress representative in the Union Council of Ministers, Ajit Kumar Panja, followed suit.

A few hours earlier, Jaya Jaitley had stepped down as president of the Samata Party, handing over charge to a little-known vice-president, V.V. Krishna Rao. This was regarded as an effort to divert at least some of the adverse attention that Fernandes, h er mentor in politics, was attracting. Till late that evening, when Fernandes appeared on Doordarshan television with a broadcast to the nation, few people had any idea of what his intentions were. But there had clearly been a shift of opinion within the BJP, which had till then tended to view Fernandes as its most loyal ally. The combined pressure of the Biju Janata Dal, the Janata Dal (United) and the TDP, finally wore down the erstwhile socialist's resistance. But when he did resign, it was on a note of defiance, with the promise that his vindication was imminent.

The next day, after Parliament was duly adjourned following a clash between aggressive slogan-shouting members, Home Minister L.K. Advani convened a meeting of the BJP's top leadership and won general assent for the appointment of a judicial commission o f inquiry. The decision was endorsed at a meeting of the NDA leadership that evening where the consensus was that Chief Justice of India Dr. A.S. Anand should be asked to name a sitting Judge of the Supreme Court to conduct the inquiry.

Signalling that his importance within the NDA remained undiminished, Fernandes briefed the media on the day's deliberations. Appearing alongside him, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan said that Fernandes enjoyed the unqualified trust of the NDA and would continue to function as its convener. In a gesture of loyalty that transgressed all norms of propriety, Mahajan also declared that Fernandes' absence from the Defence Ministry was a temporary inconvenience that would be remedied following h is exoneration by the judicial commission.

Over a fortnight when it was largely spared from any parliamentary scrutiny, the NDA government seemingly managed to restore some order within the ranks. At the March 25 "unity rally" of the alliance following the BJP's National Executive meeting, Vajpay ee was in a combative mood. Referring to Congress(I) president Sonia Gandhi's blistering speech at her party's Bangalore plenum, he said: "They have declared war and there is no going back. We have accepted the invitation. We will continue to run the gov ernment and at the same time contest the charges by going to the people."

LOFTY statements about seeking the endorsement of the people can be discounted, since the contours of the BJP's battle strategy are already clear. On March 20, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registered a case against Vincent George, private se cretary to the Congress president, for possession of assets disproportionate to his known sources of income. BJP leaders have since sought to turn on the pressure, demanding that Sonia Gandhi get rid of her aide before taking on larger issues. The Congre ss(I) has responded defiantly, arguing that George is not a public servant anymore and that the timing of the case suggests ill-concealed political vendetta. Clearly though, the BJP is hardly likely to abandon its aggressive strategy of targeting the Con gress president's multiple vulnerabilities.

Meanwhile, there were suggestions from the Opposition that the strategy of disrupting Parliament may be reformulated in the course of the customary three-week long recess of the ongoing Budget session. Non-Congress Opposition leaders, who met in New Delh i on March 23, decided to boycott all meetings of the parliamentary consultative committees during the recess. But they decided to participate in the deliberations of the departmental standing committees, in an effort to register pointedly the stand that their protest is aimed not at Parliament but at the government.

The Opposition will now have to reckon with the fact that the strategy of boycotting Parliament would perhaps only consolidate the unity of the BJP and its allies. It is pointed out that a more subtle effort to turn up the heat within Parliament could, i n contrast, sharpen the internal contradictions within the ruling alliance.

The multiple sources of discord within the BJP were highlighted in the Pratinidhi Sabha (or general council) of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, which took place on the outskirts of Delhi a few days after the Tehelka disclosures. With senior BJP function aries like Kushabhau Thakre and K.N. Govindacharya in attendance, the RSS launched a frontal attack on the government's economic policies, particularly its "reckless concessions for the entry of multinational companies". RSS general secretary Mohan Bhagw at accused the government of fostering a mood of "despondency" in the farm sector and among small-scale enterprises. There was a virtually unanimous demand aired by the BJP's ideological minders that a change of economic course was absolutely essential i n the prevalent circumstances.

RSS sarsangchalak K.S. Sudarshan imparted a further twist with his twin suggestions that the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) should not be manned by "incompetent persons" and that "extra-constitutional" centres of authority should have no place in the syst em of government. This came in the midst of renewed controversy over three individuals believed to have disproportionate clout in the government by virtue of their vantage positions within the Prime Minister's inner councils - Brajesh Mishra, principal s ecretary in the PMO, N.K. Singh, officer on special duty in the PMO, and Ranjan Bhattacharya, Vajpayee's foster son-in-law.

Vajpayee was sufficiently perturbed by the admonitions of the RSS chief to seek Advani's intervention in securing a disclaimer. Sudarshan subsequently clarified that his remarks were of a general nature and should not be read as a specific reference to V ajpayee's aides and associates. But he did not quite succeed in deflecting the adverse notice that the Prime Minister's powerful inner coterie has begun to attract.

The Shiv Sena, the BJP's partner in Hindutva extremism, also lent its voice to the demand for the eviction of the Prime Minister's three closest confidants. Sena chieftain Bal Thackeray sought initially to soften the blow, suggesting that the views expre ssed in his party's newspaper were not necessarily official ones. But days later, in a characteristic mood swing, in an interview published in the same forum he urged a similar course of action.

Brajesh Mishra is mentioned at several junctures in the Tehelka tapes as a pivotal figure in the chain of decision-making on defence purchases. This was sufficient inducement for two Samata Party MPs, Prabhunath Singh and Raghunath Jha, to demand his res ignation. The Samata duo were also extremely critical of the role that is played within the PMO by N.K. Singh and Ranjan Bhattacharya.

Within the Samata Party, Prabhunath Singh and Jha have long nurtured a sense of grievance at their exclusion from ministerial posts. The Samata dissidents number at least half the party's parliamentary strength and have been seeking to bid up their influ ence through a subtle strategy of pressuring both Fernandes's dominant faction and the BJP. In an initial gesture of solidarity, the three other Samata representatives in the Council of Ministers - Nitish Kumar, Digvijay Singh and Srinivasa Prasad - also tendered their resignations along with Fernandes. They were later persuaded to withdraw in the interests of the ruling coalition's stability. But Prabhunath Singh and Jha mobilised sufficient numbers to oppose this withdrawal, bringing the party perilou sly close to a split. Though the immediate threat was averted, the precarious balance of forces within the Samata Party is clearly a longer term hazard for the Fernandes clique.

For the BJP itself, the events following the revelations seem to foreshadow a radical change in internal equations. Laxman's exit as party president and his conspicuous absence from the National Executive meeting, the RSS' disdainful description of him a s a man who failed the basic character tests of a swayamsewak, and above all Vajpayee's failure to stand up for a man who was perceived as his personal choice - all these suggest that the Prime Minister's days of pre-eminence within the inner councils of his party are over. Although not identical in the details, the contrast with the party's conduct when Advani was indicted for culpability in the hawala scandal has attracted some attention. Advani had then quit his seat in Parliament but retained his po st as party president with his authority undiminished. Laxman has, in contrast, been eased out of the leadership of the party, though he continues to be a Member of Parliament.

Laxman was appointed president last August in the BJP's eagerness to reach out to Dalits and other backward sections. His choice was widely attributed to the Prime Minister's personal intervention and came as a major surprise even to seasoned party-watch ers. In constituting his team of office-bearers, Laxman had sidelined many erstwhile Advani loyalists, seemingly to ensure that Vajpayee's authority would never be called into question. With his removal now, the right-wing orthodoxy within the BJP is lik ely to assert itself, establishing the party headquarters as an alternate power centre to the PMO. Although the RSS has also been careful not to challenge frontally Vajpayee's leadership, it is clearly now in a better position to demand a price for its a cquiescence.