The
BJP clan, most of it, if not all of it, is almost in ecstasy?
Why is this so. The reasons are not hard to surmise even if
there is an undercurrent of some people, with great hopes,
feel that they have been left out in the cold and their future
hopes and prospects have been sealed for good. Are they or
will they be ready to play second fiddle to the King designate,
now that Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee has called it a day and
age has forced him to give up all desires and hopes of being
captain of the team once more if ever the Dilli Durbar beckons
his team to lead it again and preside over the South Block
Office of Prime Minister in Raisina Hill of New Delhi. At
the end of the BJP National Executive and National Council
sessions in New Delhi at the end of January, Mr. L.K.Advani,
the newly anointed supreme leader of the party, has spelt
out his vision of winning 360 seats in the Lok Sabha in the
2009 general elections.
Is
it a vision or "misvision" because it is patently far from
the ground realities and is based on the logic or rather illogical
premise that the BJP had won 297 seats on its own since 1989-that
is in a number of elections in 20 years. He does not add that
repeatedly it had lost many of those seats and even in 1989,
the BJP was well below the 200 seats mark. He expects his
loyal allies to garner 64 more seats and counts out at least
two former allies, the DMK and Telugu Desam as they are unlikely
to smoke the friendship pipe with Mr. Advani and company,
besides many present doubtful friends. On his own reasoning,
the BJP is likely to remain in wilderness as it cannot jump
from 130 odd seats today to even 200 seats next year. He has
ruled out National Democratic Front allies winning more than
60 seats; so where is the BJP-led government? In dreamland?
He and his party men have accused the present government of
neglecting farmers which his shining degree did with utter
contempt. The present rulers are said to be unable to cope
with the Naxalites. The threat was not even on the BJP radar,
especially of the Deputy Prime Minister and Union Home Minister,
Mr. Advani himself.
They
are more audacious, but that was bound to happen because there
was no strategy to nab them then; there is some in evolution
now perhaps. His loyalists feel let down and left in the lurch
because their lord and master is no longer in the best of
health to fight the daily, weekly or even annual battles in
Parliament or outside. Nor is he in any shape to roar from
the ramparts of the Red Fort on Independence Day with his
August 15 oratory or witticisms laced with poetry extempore,
nor expound pearls of wisdom on internal and international
affairs. Who are the people who feel that they have lost ground
and chances of the highest office? One of them could be the
venerable Jaswant Singh, a prince of a small state in Rajasthan,
polo playing and golf playing in his heyday and watching these
very games with feathered hats from grounds and courses in
Delhi and several world cities.
He had made a name for himself in being the special envoy
of Atal Bihari Vajpayee in negotiations to build bridges with
the US and later his Foreign Minister, but he was tripped
up by Vajpayee's alter ego and principal secretary, Mr. Brajesh
Mishra, who wanted to run the Foreign Office from the PMO,
but Jaswant Singh was not the one to take orders as he had
a style and command of his own. So he was switched to what
was his allegedly his first love, Finance, and he agreed with
great reluctance. Mishra killed two birds with one stone,
having brought in the ex bureaucrat, Yashwant Sinha, to the
External Affairs, to carry out his orders and allow financial
affairs to be rescued from a near mess. Yashwant Sinha, himself
a loyalist of the late Chandra Shekhar, and a plant on the
BJP, is another man who has often questioned the primacy of
L.K.Advani by claiming that his new party has many tall leaders.
He
will apparently have no cabinet berth if ever BJP comes to
power. The present party president, Mr. Rajnath Singh, has
reconciled himself to the formalization of Mr. Advani as the
top leader and even welcomed the rise and rise of Narendra
Modi, who may upstage many a hopeful in the party, including
the arrogant Mr. Murli Manohar Joshi, who thinks he is the
RSS flag bearer and being a professor of physics from Allahabad
the ablest of all. But a political party is not a classroom,
which he would like to make of it. Thus the Narendra Modi
bandwagon is on the march with his chaste Hindi and strong
Gujarati. He is believed to be a tall Gujarati leader of national
stature after a long, long time since the days of Sardar Vallabhbhai
Patel and later Morarji Desai.
He
may streamroll anyone who comes in his way and may even trip
up Mr. Advani if the BJP can realize its dream of coming to
power in the belief that the incumbency factor will work against
the Congress led United Progressive Alliance, though there
is many a slip between the cup and the lip in this quest for
power. Mrs. Sushama Swaraj is pleased as punch because she
has been able to persuade a male chauvinist party that the
BJP is to reserve 33 per cent seats for women at all levels
in the party hierarchy, though she cannot assure the women
that they will even be able to get party nomination for even
ten per cent of electoral contests for legislatures and Parliament,
but she may succeed at levels of Zila Parishad and Municipal
Corporations and Committees, if at all. Hers is a victory
of sorts and a challenge to other parties to do as much. She
is known to be an Advani loyalist, but being one of the few
women among top leaders and being eloquent and yet a bindi
wearing Bharatiya nari, she has had no hesitation in obeying
Atal Bihari Vajpayee and held many important Ministerial offices
in his government.
Vajpayee
was believed to be an expert on world's woes even though he
is a down to earth man who has walked the streets of Delhi,
Lucknow, Gwalior and many other cities and tasted savories
or chaat in the bylanes of metropolis. Whether he used a bicycle
ever or not, but he traveled by all other means of public
transport-even taking a bullock cart to Parliament House when
there was almost little or no security on the approaches to
those august chambers. That was possibly 35 or more years
ago in the Indira Gandhi era. In later years, he not only
became the External Affairs Minister in the Morarji Desai
Government, but rose to great heights as leader of Opposition
and thereby shadow Prime Minister. In the aftermath of the
Indira Gandhi assassination, he even lost his safe seat of
Gwalior as Rajiv Gandhi decided to ask the Maharaja of Scindia,
Madhav Rao, and contest the election and defeat the veteran
of many an electoral battle.
It
was then that Vajpayee chose Lucknow as his constituency,
a place where he had started his journey as journalist by
editing a small newspaper in Hindi; much later he took on
the reins of the RSS mouthpiece, Panchjanya, in Delhi. As
Prime Minister ten years ago in his first innings-not counting
the 13 or 14 days prior to the Deve Gowda and I.K.Gujral running
a United Front Government for 22 months-Vajpayee became entitled
to use grand BMWs, a couple of which remain with him as former
Prime Minister, courtesy the present Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh. From bullock cart to BMW might have been a long journey
spanning the career of a youthful leader to one in his seventies.
But he has no regrets as he has seen the gamut of life, private
and public, in the changing lights and shadows, with sorrows
and joys thrown in. He is not battle scarred, but just retired
from the war, leaving the baton somebody slightly younger
and more fitful.
Lalit Sethi, NPA |
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