Desperate measures in Uttar Pradesh

PURNIMA S. TRIPATHI

The BJP-led alliance faces virtually insurmountable odds in the forthcoming Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, the outcome of which will certainly influence the fate of the NDA government in New Delhi.

THE Hindi heartland promises yet again to test the real strength of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre as the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh draw closer. If the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies win, nothing can shake the NDA government for the rest of its term. However, if they do not, there could be problems galore for the BJP at the Centre too.

There are already signs of desperation in the State BJP. The dismissal of Loktantrik Congress Party (LCP) leader and Power Minister Naresh Agrawal from the Cabinet is only the most recent of them. Political circles see it as a last-ditch attempt by the BJP to redeem its image of being a 'party with a difference'. In the wake of the 1996 assembly elections the party compromised its ideology and principles and made a mockery of this claim: it joined hands with parties having dubious credentials, split other political parties like the Congress(I) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in its lust for power, and turned a blind eye to the criminalisation of politics. All this deprived the party of its moral high ground, and the middle classes, which voted for it in large numbers earlier, are a disgruntled lot now.

Agrawal's removal has not gone down well with many people. The timing left no one in doubt that it had to do more with political motives than a concern for prudence or propriety. A senior State bureaucrat told Frontline, "After all, who was not aware of Agrawal's activities earlier? Corruption charges had been levelled against him when Kalyan Singh (as Chief Minister) made him Power Minister after splitting the Congress(I)."

According to him, irrespective of the tall claims by Chief Minister Rajnath Singh while removing Agrawal, the move was only an effort to get rid of excess baggage as the elections approached. "As long as Agrawal suited the BJP he was clean, then he suddenly turned corrupt," said the officer, pointing out that this was not the first time Agrawal had openly criticised the government.

After his dismissal, 14 of the 19 LCP legislators met and passed a resolution expelling him from the party. They then elected Shyam Sunder Sharma as the legislature party leader and pledged their support to the Rajnath Singh government. Although the sacking did not threaten the government's survival, it exposed the BJP to the charge of practising political opportunism.

The BJP's central leadership is conscious of the party's "bleak prospects" in the State. Addressing Members of Parliament from Uttar Pradesh at a dinner meeting recently, Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee, who represents Lucknow in the Lok Sabha, made no bones about the fact that the future of the NDA government depended a lot on the outcome of the elections in U.P. "Reports in the media have painted a bleak scenario for the BJP. The elections in U.P. are crucial. There are big challenges lying ahead of us and all of us need to work hard," Vajpayee is reported to have told them. Advising them not to get disheartened by adverse media reports, he exhorted them to go out into the field, work hard and turn the odds around in their favour.

The BJP is, indeed, up against heavy odds. With the exit of Kalyan Singh, the party has no Other Backward Classes (OBC) leader who can mobilise the votes of this section. Upper caste voters, too, expressed their resentment in the recent Lok Sabha byelection in Shahjehanpur and in the civic bodies elections - the BJP suffered heavy setbacks in these.

The fact that the tide was turning against the BJP became clear in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections when the party won only 29 seats as against 51 in the previous Lok Sabha elections. In the Shahjehanpur byelection, which was caused by the death of Congress leader Jitendra Prasada, the BJP slid to the fourth position from the second and its candidate, Satyapal Yadav, lost his deposit. The Samajwadi Party (S.P.) won the seat indicating that upper-caste members, who form a substantial segment in this constituency, did not vote for the BJP.

If Kalyan Singh had combined the Ram Mandir issue and the Mandal euphoria in favour of the party, now such a consolidation looks impossible. This realisation probably prompted the Chief Minister to announce the 'quota within quota' for the most backward castes among both the OBCs and the Dalits. The announcement is still on paper and its impact on the most backward castes is uncertain, especially when the OBCs have been getting marginalised in the BJP.

Another problem that the BJP faces is a crisis of credibility. It can no longer talk big about nationalistic ideology since it has kept its own agenda on the back-burner to please its allies in the NDA. Specifically, it cannot talk of the mandir issue anymore because its allies will not allow it to. It cannot talk of good governance because the record in these last five years in U.P. is there for all to see. It cannot talk of inner-party discipline and morality because its Ministers have fought over petty issues at Cabinet and party meetings, and openly campaigned against one other. So much so that one Chief Minister (Kalyan Singh) was sacked and another (Ram Prakash Gupta) was replaced. As for morality, the Tehelka tapes, in which the party president himself was shown accepting wads of currency notes from so-called arms agents, are too recent to be forgotten.

So what is the party left with? What is its slogan for the assembly elections? None. Rajnath Singh admitted as much to Frontline. "We do not believe in slogans. We believe in showing our work to prove our worth," he said.

But there is precious little to show. Law and order in U.P. is bad and the power situation is worse, with people sometimes having to go without power for days on end. Industrial development has remained static - no major initiative has been taken in the last five years and those that were taken earlier have made no progress. Farmers have been at the receiving end on account of non-payment of sugarcane prices and a glut in the potato crop. Finally, caste and communal tensions have reached flashpoint.

Realising the odds it faced, the State BJP initiated a gaon chalo campaign wherein the senior leaders, including Ministers were asked to spend a few nights in the villages and hold chaupals (village meetings) in order to establish a rapport with the rural masses. It is too early to say whether the campaign produced the desired results.

Capping it all is the fact that Vajpayee's image has taken a beating This could be attributed to his failing health, his helplessness in controlling the satraps in his own office, and his apparent lack of control over the allies.

AS against this bleak situation for the BJP, the mood in the opposition camp in U.P., is upbeat. The S.P., which is a part of the People's Front, and the Congress are on a high - the S.P. because of the spectacular victory of its ally, the Left Front, in the Assembly elections in West Bengal and the Congress because of the gains it made in the other States that went to the polls in May.

The BSP has remained as strong as ever, with the Dalit consolidation becoming even more evident in its favour. But if the long queues of cars of senior Uttar Pradesh bureaucrats at S.P. leader Mulayam Singh Yadav's gates in Lucknow are any indication, they expect him to win.

Against this background, the Assembly elections in U.P. promise to be the battle that will decide the fate of the BJP-led government at the Centre. After the poor show by the NDA constituents in May, the BJP took refuge in the argument that those elections were held in States where the BJP hardly mattered and that its allies fared poorly because of the anti-incumbency factor. In U.P., however, this argument will not hold. The outcome will be a verdict on the acceptability of the BJP.