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Uttar Pradesh : BJP to have its own manifesto |
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With the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh due in mid-February, the BJP has almost finalized its strategy. It will contest more than 300 of the 403 seats leaving less than 100 for its allies. It will also have its own election manifesto and not a common alliance manifesto. Whether Ayodhya figures in the manifesto, and if yes, in what form, will be left for the Central leadership of the party to decide. The party’s focus, however, will be on social justice and development issues.
According to BJP National General Secretary Pyarelal Khandelwal, with stakes very high in this Assembly poll, the BJP does not seem lenient about allotting a seat to any ally unless it is convinced that the ally has a better chance to win the seat. Normally, all winning seats should be allotted to the respective parties. This will be the criterion for the BJP and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (of Ajit Singh). But this cannot be applicable to the Loktantrik Congress and the Janatantrik BSP which had fought the 1996 Assembly elections as part of the Congress or the BSP, pointed out the BJP leader. Not only these two parties had drawn the advantage of being part of their parent parties in the last elections, the Congress and the BSP themselves had fought the elections under an alliance thereby giving each other the advantage of their respective support base.
The BJP is not willing to consider that the MLAs, who broke away from the Congress and the BSP and formed their own parties, can claim to have the same support base in their respective constituencies now. This position is bound to cause friction between the BJP and its allies, but the mood in the BJP appears to be one of no compromise on winnability. And what constitutes winnability? It is not merely the candidate’s “position in the constituency, “ his public image will also be a criterion, Khandelwal said.
The least problematic adjustment could be with the Rashtriya Lok Dal. As the RLD had contested separately, therefore it should be easy for the BJP to see in which constituencies they stood first or second. But even the RLD has less than 10 MLAS in the Assembly now. As far as the NDA allies at the Centre like the Janata Dal-U, the Samata Party or Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janashakti are concerned, BJP leaders are set to do some hard bargaining. The BJP gave eight seats to the Samata last time, it won two and lost deposits in six. The same was the case with the JD-U. The Lok Janashakti had an impressive show of strength a couple of days ago in Lucknow by holding a rally of Dalits. Its leader, Ram Vilas Paswan, has claimed that he would ask for 100 seats from the BJP.
The basic details of the Assembly elections were discussed at the BJP headquarters recently which was attended by former BJP president and in charge of UP Kushabhau Thakre, Khandelwal, UP BJP president Kalraj Mishra and three organising secretaries and general secretary. Kalraj Mishra was authorised to form a group to draft a manifesto for the party in line with the objectives discussed already. This manifesto will then be sent to the Central leadership for clearance. The issue or its absence, or what treatment should be given to the Ram temple promise, would, therefore, be decided by the Central leadership of the party in consultation with senior leaders like Prime Minister Vajpayee and Home Minister Advani. The process is likely to be completed much before the next National Executive session of the BJP takes place that is likely some time in January. At the national level, the BJP has often got out of sticky situations arguing that it was bound by the common agenda of the NDA, which put the controversial issues on the backburner. But in the case of UP, it wants to chart its own course keeping the State’s interests in mind.
Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Rajnath Singh has dismissed reports of differences between him and BJP State unit president Kalraj Mishra. Media reports have suggested that the two leaders are heading for a confrontation over the distribution of seats among allies in the ruling coalition. BJP candidates have been recommended by the BJP State unit, for the constituencies represented by over a dozen ministers of the Loktantrik Congress, Lok Janashakti Party and the Independent group. Coincidentally, most ministers whose names had been struck off the panel prepared by the BJP are those who are known for their proximity to the Chief Minister. It was argued that a large number of these ministers had become a liability with their tainted image.There were charges of criminal acts and corruption against them. It is felt that it would do the party a lot of good if it got rid of the excess baggage before the elections.
Despite the reports of discontent in the BJP State unit, the Chief Minister is confident that the BJP would win emphatically in the Assembly elections. He commented that the fight against terrorism will continue and he was undeterred by growing threats from militant outfits. However, he declined to go into the details about the threats he received in the recent weeks from some fundamentalist outfits. Singh has asked his officers in the districts to fan out in the most-backward villages and assess the impact of the plans and programmes implemented by the State government. However, the CM denied that this new scheme had anything to do with the improving the image of his Government before the elections. Rajnath Singh’s sops to the Most Backward Castes by allotting a special quota for them had led to the Opposition calling it a poll gimmick.
The Janata Dal(U) in UP is witnessing a revival with the party holding a series of rallies aimed at making it visible once again. One such rally was held ; at a town near Azamgarh, a stronghold of Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party.
The rally, organised by the JD (U), was projected as an NDA affair with several BJP leaders also participating in it. What was significant was the participation of Azamgarh MP Ramakant Yadav, who was recently expelled from the SP after he protested against Amar Singh’s “vice-like grip” on the organisation and the “marginalisation” of leaders like him. It was the first JD(U) rally to be held in east Uttar Pradesh.
The party will now intensify its mass contact plans by identifying more places in the region for holding similar rallies. After the virtual wipe-out of the Janata Dal in the last elections, the party had gone into a moribund state but is now slowly bouncing back into mainstream State politics dominated by the BJP, SP and the BSP. Besides reactivating the erstwhile Lok Dal network, the JD(U) is making an all-out effort at attracting disgruntled leaders from the Samajwadi Party to its fold. It hopes to make a dent in the SP’s Yadav vote base. The JD(U) is optimistic about the possibility of quite a few SP MLAs walking over to its side as the Assembly elections get nearer. Even a 15 per cent cut in the MY (Muslim-Yadav) combination of the SP will spell disaster for it.
The BJP, the big brother in the NDA, is also happy to associate itself with the JD(U) rallies for ultimately the benefit of the JD(U) making inroads into the SP’s Yadav vote base will go to it. The other Janata parivar splinter, Paswan’s Lok Janashakti, is also being perceived as another factor, however minor it may be, in cutting into the votes of the BJP’s rivals. Paswan, who is eyeing the Dalit vote bank of the BSP, has indicated that his support for the BJP cannot be taken for granted. If an adequate number of seats were not allotted to it by the BJP, the party may contest independently, he has warned. Paswan has suggested that the BJP-led front should contest under the NDA banner and preferably with the common manifesto, though the BJP has said it wanted to fight on its own manifesto keeping in mind the importance of the UP poll and its possible fallout on the Centre.
The other major party in the poll fray, the Congress, has clearly indicated that it does not visualize a spectacular performance. The party has decided that it will not contest more than 150 seats in right earnest. The party is likely to give a go-ahead to its candidates by the end of this month to campaign for the seats which “have winning potential”. “We have the feedback down to the block level and have identified the places where we should work with full steam,” said a senior party leader. The party will, however, be formally contesting from all the 403 Assembly constituencies in the State.
According to senior Congress leaders, given the current political situation, no party has the potential to get an absolute majority. And, for the formation of a coalition government, they reason, even 40 to 50 legislators are sufficient to come to power. The national leadership was seriously contemplating giving a chance to those in the UP Assembly elections who had lost the earlier parliamentary poll. There is no denying the fact that any aspirant of a major political party in the Lok Sabha poll has a hold on at least one to two Assembly segments out of the total five coming under a particular parliamentary constituency. Hence, the party wants to give them (the aspirants who lost the Madhya Pradesh elections) a chance on a truncated political field, a Congress leader revealed. The party leadership at the national level wants to leave nothing to chance this time around. The Congress is targeting the BJP accusing the CM of doling out promises to the electorate. The party plans to meet Election Commission officials to convey in detail the violation of electioneering norms by Rajnath Singh. The party said the CM had announced schemes worth Rs 70,000 million which had no possibility of getting implemented and virtually amounted to cheating the people.
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