Growing strife

The power struggle within the BJP and trouble from coalition partners pose serious challenges before the Kalyan Singh Government in Uttar Pradesh.

THE scene at Uttar Pradesh Sadan in New Delhi was not extraordinary; it was the usual gathering of Bharatiya Janata Party activists and leaders waiting for the arrival of a VVIP from the State. What was, however, unusual on that day, May 11, was the derisive comments that were made about the dignitary. "Oh, the Kalyan Singh Government? It is living up to our expectations." This barb from a senior BJP leader drew peals of laughter from the hangers-on. He went on: "We expected trouble for the (Kalyan) Government after the (BJP) national council meeting. Trouble started with the moves from the coalition partners in the State to form a coordination committee for themselves and became deeper with the infamous Raja Bhaiyya episode." By all indications, he added, the cold war between the State party and the coalition is bound to continue.

The general impression in the BJP is that the battle within the ruling coalition has hampered the party's preparations for the byelections to seven Assembly seats, scheduled for June. The coalition partners, the Uttar Pradesh Loktantrik Congress (UPLC) and the Janatantrik Bahujan Samaj Party (JBSP), have demanded three and four seats respectively and the BJP leaders believe that they are only trying to take advantage of the predicament of their party, the coalition leader.

Although the BJP tried to appear unanimous in its public posture of denying the demands of its allies, it is clear that the ceasefire brought about by the central leadership through its confabulations with the Chief Minister and his current principal opponent, State party president Rajnath Singh, on April 29, has not improved the prospects of a permanent solution. The moves and counter moves by the two leaders continue, with the upper-caste lobby, led by Ministers such as Lalji Tandon and Kalraj Mishra working against the Chief Minister.

However, in the post-BJP National Council phase, the most significant contribution to the confusion in the Ministry came from the coalition partners, particularly a section of the UPLC, the JBSP and some independent MLAs. This manifested itself in the form of a revolt by 30 Ministers over the first information report (FIR) filed against Minister Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiyya, who was elected as an independent, for allegedly kidnapping a 60-year-old woman tenant from his ancestral house and holding her captive for 36 hours.

The FIR, filed after the woman was rescued, gave the number of her captors as 35. The Ministers alleged that Om Prakash Singh, the Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) of Lucknow, had leaked the details of the episode to the media and indicated that the Minister was involved in "the kidnapping".

The reasons for the alleged leak, they claim, were Raja Bhaiyya's closeness to Rajnath Singh and the role he played in the campaign against Kalyan Singh. The fact that the SSP was handpicked by Kalyan Singh during the last administrative reshuffle to "ensure maintenance of law and order in the State capital" added to the acrimony. Both the SSP and the Chief Minister have denied any foul play and asserted that the police had acted on a specific complaint with the sole objective of maintaining law and order. But that has not pacified the agitated Ministers. They made a complaint to Rajnath Singh, which he promptly forwarded to the central leadership.

The revolt in the coalition over the Raja Bhaiyya episode was followed by three major developments: first, the resumption of talks between the State and central BJP leadership involving Kalyan Singh, Rajnath Singh, national president of the party, Khushabhau Thakre, and Union Home Minister L.K. Advani; secondly, moves by a section of the UPLC, the JBSP and independent MLAs to form a coordination committee among themselves, essentially to battle the "Big Brother attitude of the BJP", especially the Chief Minister and his acolytes; and thirdly, the efforts of the Kalyan Singh group to split the ranks of its detractors, especially the UPLC and the JBSP, and to compel some its opponents in the BJP to fall in line using the corruption charges against them.

Indications from the negotiations between the State and central leadership of the BJP are that the central leaders are talking tough as they did before the National Council meeting. Apparently not taking sides, they have asked the Chief Minister and the State party president to behave. According to a senior leader, the central leadership has essentially held that the party cannot afford to alter the power equations in the State unit for the time being. The meaning of this position is clear: neither the campaign for the removal of the Chief Minister nor the one for clipping the wings of the party president will bear fruit in the immediate future.

The problem with this position is that both the sides are not overly concerned about short-term results; they are working for medium-term gains. According to a senior UPLC leader who is considered close to Rajnath Singh, the non-BJP coalition partners will form a coordination committee soon but they will make an all-out effort for the replacement of the Chief Minister only after a couple of months. "The intervening period will reveal many facets of the Chief Minister's style of functioning, which will be extremely embarrassing for the BJP," he said.

Similarly, Kalyan Singh's supporters aver that they have enough time to split the ranks of the detractors, especially in the background of the central leadership's position against replacing the Chief Minister. "We have already made inroads into the UPLC, and by the time Rajnath Singh and the upper-caste lobby decide to strike, they will see that the numbers are on our side," a Minister told Frontline. The Minister claimed that Rajnath Singh and his supporters were working on the assumption that the Thakur MLAs would stand by them en bloc. "This is an illusion. We have already created divisions within the Thakur group," he said.

According to senior leaders on Kalyan Singh's side, the Chief Minister has struck an increasingly aggressive posture basically on the strength of the inroads he has made into the rival camp. Talking to mediapersons on May 8, on his return from the BJP National Council meeting, Kalyan Singh asserted that his position was secure and that all his adversaries in the coalition had been told where they stood on the power balance. Four days later, addressing a meeting of BJP legislators, he was even more aggressive: "Those who hope to send me to the Centre and take over the reins in Uttar Pradesh are living in an illusory world. I am not going anywhere."

The Chief Minister has also made some efforts to create the impression that he is back to taking governance seriously. Official meetings to monitor developmental programmes are being highlighted by the Chief Minister's secretariat. Announcements about tackling political as well as administrative corruption also appear increasingly in the Chief Minister's statements. There is an impression within the BJP that the tirade against corruption is aimed at intimidating Ministers such as Lalji Tandon and Kalraj Mishra, whose Ministries were involved in the construction of the controversial Ambedkar Park during the Mayawati-led BJP-BSP regime. The role of their Ministries was criticised in the Comptroller and Auditor-General's Report, and was used by the Chief Minister in the inner-party struggle. Kalyan Singh had presented copies of the CAG report to the central leaders and pointed out that the conduct of the Ministers was not above reproach.

IN the meantime, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has completed preliminary investigation into another corruption case of the Mayawati Government, which involves the purchase of 300 float pumps for the Fire Service Department at disproportionately high prices and has filed an FIR naming Mayawati as an accused. The pumps were bought from a Chennai-based company at Rs. 2.49 lakhs a piece while the actual cost of a pump at that time was Rs. 58,000. According to sources in the BJP, the Chief Minister is planning to hand over the Ambedkar parks case also to the CBI. The political implications for the BJP of such a move would be enormous, considering the fact that the role in the project of two of its Ministers has been questioned by the CAG.

All these point towards a heightening of conflict in the State Government. The central leadership has not helped find a solution, but it will have to think in terms of major measures if it wants to set things right in the strongest BJP unit in the country.