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BJP at crossroads : Importance of Advani |
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L.K. Advani was hoping to take the place of Vajpayee once he made way for a new BJP leadership. It has come in an unexpected way. Vajpayee has allowed Advani to takeover as Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha to carry on the battle with the Congress-led government.
Advani, observers say, will be watched with the greatest interest. This is not only because of the signal role that the Opposition traditionally plays in Indian democracy but also because his policy positions will shape the BJP’s image - and its very future. After a defeat that begs the use of the word “historic”, the main opposition party finds itself at the crossroads once again. Will the BJP choose Hindutva (Hindu activism) politics or will it tread the path of moderation that Vajpayee had tried to plot. Advani, with his well-established reputation of being the hawk in the party, has shown an inclination to moderate his earlier stances while in government and in election campaigning. Will this shift in strategy and perception be held hostage to the demands of oppositional politics and the pressures brought on the party by the rabid elements within the Sangh Parivar (RSS family), observers wonder. Much depends on how Advani himself perceives the situation. He has one advantage that Vajpayee did not have. While Vajpayee had to depend on his personal appeal to silence his detractors, Advani can better negotiate with the hardliners given the fact that he has, politically, been more in sync with them.
Advani’s accession - while completely expected - also underlines a conspicuous weakness in the BJP: The lack of second generation of credible leaders within the Lok Sabha. Those among the younger lot who could have done their bit to keep the party flag flying in the Lower House find themselves confined to the Upper House by a quirk of circumstances and possibly bad planning. This only makes the burden that now rests on the shoulders of a man who was the leader of the Opposition 13 years ago that much heavier.
The BJP criticised the Congress for changing the party constitution and making Sonia Gandhi Chairman of the Congress Parliamentary Party. But it has had to do exactly the same thing itself, thus making Vajpayee Chairman and Advani Leader of the Parliamentary Party.
After lying low following the electoral reverses, Vajpayee now exudes confidence. He has tried to boost the morale of party MPs by saying that the BJP won’t be in opposition for long. He has ruled out that Gujarat riots had anything to do with the party defeat. This, say observers, is either refusal to accept reality or to somehow keep the Hindu card intact. His clean chit to the Modi brigade looks all the more odd given that all allies have squarely blamed the Gujarat Chief Minister for their troubles. He feels that the BJP lost due to complacency and over-confidence.
Growing tension between Cong, SP
The tension in the relationship between the Congress and the Mulayam Singh Yadav government in Uttar Pradesh has been growing and has taken a worse turn. Both the parties have been criticising each other in public. If the Congress party has demanded an inquiry into an attack on Sonia Gandhi’s election agent in Amethi, Rudrapratap Singh, the UP Government has alleged before the Liberhan Commission that the then Congress government at the Centre along with the then BJP Chief Minister Kalyan Singh and other BJP and VHP leaders were party to the conspiracy that led to the demolition of disputed structure at Ayodhya.
Recently the All India Congress Committee (AICC) demanded an assurance from the state government that it will order an inquiry into an attack on Rudrapratap Singh. The party has asked the state administration to arrest the culprits behind the attack. The union government has also rushed Minister of State for Home Shriprakash Jaiswal to the spot for an “on the spot assessment’. Though Congress spokesman Anand Sharma did not name anyone for the attack, he felt it necessary to recall that the Congress had lodged a complaint with the Election Commission before the poll alleging that Independent MLA Akhilesh Singh (an expelled Congress man now close to the SP) was planning to unleash violence in the Amethi constituency.
Though the Congress is technically supporting the Mulayam government, the AICC’s demand comes at a time when differences between both the parties are growing. In another incident also the SP made their growing differences public. After a dinner hosted for its party MPs, the party general secretary, Amar Singh said it had extended support to the Manmohan Singh-led Government only to keep the Bharatiya Janata Party out. He repeatedly cautioned that the Congress should not assume that the SP had foreclosed all its options. “We have given support. But that does not mean that we have become their bonded labourers,’’ Amar Singh cautioned. He took pot shots at the Congress leadership and made the point that the first leaders to give up their chances of becoming Prime Minister were veteran CPIM leader and former Chief Minister Jyoti Basu and former Prime Minister V.P. Singh. “Those who claim that they (reference to Sonia Gandhi) were the first are deluding themselves,” he said.
Earlier, the Congress’ indifference to the SP was made more than evident when Chief Minister Yadav or his colleague Amar Singh failed to get a formal invitation from 10 Janpath (the New Delhi residence of Sonia Gandhi) for a dinner for the leaders of the new ruling front. Though Singh gate-crashed into the dinner party, egged on by CPI-M leader H.S. Surjeet, and later the SP sent a letter of support to the President for a Congress-led government at the Centre, the Congress refused to formally associate Mulayam Singh party with its government.
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