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Uttar Pradesh : Do or die situation for BJP

	June 25, 2001

Politically, Uttar Pradesh is a most significant State in the Hindi belt, in fact in India, at least as far as the BJP is concerned. It was in this State that the BJP became a political force after the Ayodhya movement. Today, the BJP is on the defensive on this very issue. It is not sure whether to make the construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya an election issue or not. But indications are that willy-nilly the party is going towards that direction.



Ayodhya as an election issue

The immediate cause of discomfort for the BJP as a party and the State Government in Uttar Pradesh is the Babri masjid demolition case. The CBI has approached both the Centre and the State Government for issuance of a fresh notification in the case. A special CBI court on May 4 had dropped proceedings against Union Ministers L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharati and 18 others till the “legal defect” in the notification constituting the special court was rectified. Congress president Sonia Gandhi has written to the Prime Minister twice in two weeks asking for his personal intervention in persuading the UP Chief Minister to issue a fresh notification so that the Union Ministers could be tried in the court. The State Government, however, appears to have made up its mind not to issue any further notification implying that the case against the Union Ministers is as good as closed.

Meanwhile, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), an organisation affiliated to the RSS, has announced the dates and plans for the construction of the Ram Temple at Ayodhya. Hindu saints are to tour the country to create an atmosphere congenial to the project, and from January 21 to 27 next year, they will march from Ayodhya to Parliament to assert their demand. The construction could begin any time “after March 12.” The BJP continues to deny that the temple is on its election agenda.

But this does not appear to be the case. Deposing before the Liberhan Commission of Inquiry, Mr L.K. Advani drew a parallel between the freedom struggle of the country and the Ram Janambhoomi movement. This is in line with the sentiments of the VHP, RSS and the hidden agenda of the BJP. But it also constituted a “volte-face” over his earlier pronouncements. Ashim Chatterjee, a political analyst, says this is not uncommon. One remembers the sensational statement made not so long ago by the honourable Prime Minister claiming the Ram Janambhoomi movement was an expression of national sentiment. Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi, another BJP stalwart, expressed similar sentiments when deposing before the Liberhan Commission a few days ago.

All the statements of similar strain are not at all accidental. These are “intentional” utterings made with an eye on the coming UP Assembly elections where a good performance, if not an outright victory, has become absolutely necessary for the survival of the BJP-led government at the Centre. The UP elections have always influenced the power equation in Delhi. But after its dismal performance in the Assembly elections throughout the country, a victory in UP has become doubly necessary. The BJP is determined to stem, and if possible reverse, the tide there.

But whatever be the need, the BJP faces an alarming situation in UP. In spite of Mr. Rajnath Singh winning with a comfortable margin in an Assembly by-election, the political situation in the State is not at all comfortable for his party. Though the new Chief Minister has been able, albeit in his questionable way, to bring about a semblance of administration in place of the “anarchy let loose” during the earlier Gupta regime, the continuous erosion of the support base of the BJP could not be arrested.

A large section of the high castes and OBCs has gone over to the Congress. Most of the Dalit followers have left with Mr Kalyan Singh. The formidable MY (Muslim-Yadav) combination still rests its faith in the Samajwadi Party of Mulayam Singh. A large section of the Dalits still looks up to the BSP led by Kanshi Ram and former Chief Minister Mayawati.

Under the circumstances, Mr Advani’s volte-face becomes a clear pointer to the political line the BJP is going to adopt in the coming UP elections. The party has decided to play the Hindutva card in order to restore the support of upper-caste Hindus. This precisely is the significance of the renewed love of the BJP leaders, Mr Advani included, for the Ram Janambhoomi movement.



BJP in election mode

At the end of the two-day meeting of the Uttar Pradesh BJP Working Committee, the party reportedly decided to play the “Atal card” to retrieve its fortunes in the state. Although the Committee conceded that Mr. Vajpayee’s charm and charisma did not work in the state during the last Lok Sabha elections, the state unit decided to fall back on him after an assessment of the Chief Minister Rajnath Singh’s brief tenure.

The party has also decided to evolve strict criteria for giving the ticket and plan rallies and programmes at the state level. A major problem that has arisen concerns in-fighting. Almost every speaker at the Working Committee’s session referred to the turf war among the big four - Chief Minister Rajnath Singh, state BJP chief Kalraj Mishra and State Ministers Lalji Tandon and Om Prakash Singh. The central BJP’s decision to appoint “Pramukhs” (unit chiefs) to oversee the working of Parliamentary constituencies is being seen primarily as a concept to enable central leaders to get an objective assessments of the political scenario in states where factional feuds are common. In Uttar Pradesh, for example, it is virtually impossible for the high command to get an honest picture of what is going on.

The other players outside the BJP alliance in the U.P. polls are the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Congress. The BSP has already launched its campaign and its 11-point action plan refers to issues such as government’s inability to issue a fresh notification in the Ayodhya case, the plight of farmers and atrocities on the weaker sections who are generally referred to as dalits. In recent incidents of caste violence, dalits from Jalaun, Aligarh and Fatehpur were attacked by high caste thakurs. Whether the incidents were politically motivated or not, Mayawati and Mulayam Singh have already gone to town lambasting the “upper caste U.P. Chief Minister for the atrocities against the dalits.”



The caste factor

The above charge may not be true, but the BJP is increasingly exploiting the caste factor. Its attempt at forging an alliance with the Rashtriya Lok Dal of Ajit Singh, is aimed at winning over the jat group to counter the “formidable” caste groupings of the SP and the BSP. But according to observers like Sudesh K. Verma, the success of the effort would depend on the ability of the BJP to consolidate its hold on the forward caste, particularly the Thakurs and the Brahmins.

In a four-cornered contest - the Samajwadi Party, the BSP, the Congress and the BJP - any party or group, getting about 35 per cent of the vote may emerge as the single-largest party and even come closer to the magic figure of 202 in a House of 403. By aligning with Mr. Singh, the BJP is trying to prevent a division of jat votes in western Uttar Pradesh. The BJP and the RLD together may win a majority of the 40 Assembly seats where the jats are supposed to be a decisive factor. In other areas, the BJP can get an edge by the addition of jat votes into its traditional votebanks.

So, Mr. Ajit Singh needs to be placated by inducting him as a Union Cabinet Minister of the National Democratic Alliance, though he may not be given the agriculture portfolio to keep Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala in good humour.

The BJP is in two minds on whether to align with the Kurmi groupings in eastern Uttar Pradesh - Apna Dal, headed by Sone Lal Patel. Some Kurmi leaders in the BJP are opposed to the proposal as they calculate Kurmis to be still loyal to the party. The other section holds that Mr. Patel has emerged as the fulcrum for the Kurmis’ political aspirations. The Apna Dal is reported to have control over about one-third of the seven per cent Kurmi votes. The state BJP leadership would not mind if the Apna Dal fields candidates on the BJP symbol. Mr. Singh is trying to persuade BJP leaders to suitably accommodate the Apna Dal and to prevent it from supporting the opposition. In any case, the BJP-led alliance promises to be the largest political grouping during the Assembly polls. There would be the Loktantrik Congress, which split from the Congress after winning Assembly seats on the Congress ticket; the Jantantrik Bahujan Samaj Party, which did the same to the BSP, the RLD, the Samata Party, the Janata Dal United, the Lok Jan Shakti and the Apna Dal (likely).

It is difficult to say that all of them will be able to add up to the 35 per cent votes that could decide who will be in power. Barring the RLD and the Apna Dal, none of the parties can claim to win seats on its own.

The BJP secured 32-34 per cent votes in the 1996 Assembly elections without any alliance and emerged as the single-largest party by getting 177 plus Assembly seats. In the 1999 LOk Sabha elections, the party’s vote percentage came down to 27 and its tally dipped from 57 in 1998 to 27. The party leaders expect the vote percentage to rise after an alliance with the RLD and on the assumption that the pattern of voting is different for the Lok Sabha and the Assembly elections. They forget that the 1999 vote was for Prime Minsiter Vajpayee and local considerations should have played a minimal role. Apart from a dent in the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) support base, the party has also failed to retain the support of the forward caste.

The Brahmins and the Thakurs have locked horns for political supremacy and it is difficult to say that they would solidly support the BJP. Mr. Vajpayee has tried to placate the Brahmins by giving the Rajya Sabha ticket to state unit president Kalraj Mishra. For the same reason Mr. Mishra has been allowed to continue as state unit president despite Chief Minsiter Rajnath Singh’s reservations.

The biggest threat is from the BSP which has established its credentials by transferring Dalit votes to any party or candidate. It, therefore, does not want an alliance with any other party which cannot transfer its votes. The BSP has the support of about 15 per cent of the Dalits in the form of the Jatavas. The party will probably field strong candidates of a dominant community to ensure victory. The Samajwadi Party too is likely to bank on the same strategy with solid support from the dominant Yadavas among the OBCs.

Any of the two parties able to present the image of a winner is certain to corner the minority votes played at 17 per cent. The BJP expects to gain an advantage if the minority votes get divided among the Samajwadi Party, the BSP and the Congress. The Congress cannot be written off. It had eight per cent votes in the 1996 Assembly elections. In the 1999 Lok Sabha elections, the vote percentage increased to 14. The party is expected to try and woo the forward castes, the Muslims and sections of the OBCs. If the Assembly byelections are any indicators, the BJP has been fast losing its appeal.

Even though the BJP may be down, the state of affairs on the other side of the political spectrum in Uttar Pradesh is not all that simple. It may be true that Mr. Mulayam Singh and his Samajwadi Party had managed to not just hold their ground but even been able to grow across the State. After having won in as many as 27 Lok Sabha constituencies in the 1999 Lok Sabha polls, Mr. Mulayam Singh seems to have built a party organisation across the State. But then, the Samajwadi Party cannot ignore the strong support base that the Bahujan Samaj Party retains in Uttar Pradesh. And as long as the two parties refuse to get together, they cannot take on the BJP effectively. And as for the Congress(I), there are hardly any signs of the party having consolidated the gains that came its way in the immediate wake of Ms. Sonia Gandhi taking over as party president. There are no signs of any party organisation in place and this leaves the Congress(I) in Uttar Pradesh in the same position as it was in 1996. All these factors are integral to the Uttar Pradesh political scene but there are many imponderables still and new alliances too may be in the making.



BJP and Trinamul alliance in the offing

According to media assessment the BJP has been moving decisively towards a revival of the alliance with the Trinamul, as this is not only in the interest of the BJP at the national level but also in the electoral interest of the state unit. A number of factors are making the Trinamul leader, Ms. Mamata Banerjee, gravitate towards the NDA. She has made her peace with George Fernandes who also appears to have forgiven her. While her former colleague, Ajit Panja, has openly revolted against her and has threatened to split the party, most of the other MPs are keen to go back to the NDA. And above all, her alliance with the Congress in West Bengal appears to be cracking.

And as the BJP and the Trinamul move towards a new alliance, the BJP leaders have begun to state its conditions. Some senior leaders say their party has three main demands. First, the two parties will have to form a front, which will conduct all agitations against the Left Front jointly. Neither the BJP nor the Trinamul, will do anything individually. Second, Miss Banerjee would have to be “rational” in future seat adjustment talks. Third, Miss Banerjee will need to give up the practice of consenting to potentially unpopular decisions of the Union Cabinet in Delhi, only to send in “letters of resignation” in ostensible protest against the same decisions.

But whatever the conditionalities, many in the BJP still consider her an asset. In West Bengal, the party had won over 1.9 million votes but not a single seat, while the Forward Bloc had won 26 seats with about 2 million votes and the CPI, with almost 600,000 votes, has 7 MLAs in the new Assembly. An alliance is obviously to the benefit of both parties in the state. BJP leaders also feel that delay in taking Miss Banerjee back into the NDA may prompt some MPs to desert her and accept Ajit Panja’s leadership instead.

Then there is a small minority that feels that parliamentary elections could be held in February or March 2002, along with Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. For the BJP, the situation in Uttar Pradesh is uncertain. In the event of unity among the non-BJP parties, the party is likely to lose. Its share in the vote is 32 per cent. Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav has a committed following of between 20 and 25 per cent. The Bahujan Samaj Party has between eight and ten per cent. The Congress was wiped out last time but may have improved its position since. An understanding among these parties, and other anti-BJP groups, would spell serious trouble for the party. Since Mr Vajpayee is elected from UP, a defeat in that state would call his authority into question.

But things will be different if Lok Sabha and UP Assembly elections are held simultaneously. Pakistan Chief Executive Pervez Musharraf, media analysts say, is coming to India under pressure from the USA and the Arab countries. “Pakistan is deep in debt to these countries and the Arabs have refused to foot the bill for Kashmir terrorists any longer. So, Gen. Musharraf is likely to agree to the conversion of the Line of Control into an international border.” This will generate tremendous goodwill for Mr Vajpayee and the NDA from all sections of Indians. Further, LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharati and Sadhvi Rithambara hope to be exonerated by the Liberhan Commission of the Ayodhya demolition charges. These developments - “cutting of the 53-year-old gordian knot of Kashmir by Mr Vajpayee” - and the Liberhan acquittal should it materialise - will create a favourable situation for the BJP, which the party would like to utilise. Miss Banerjee’s - and the Trinamul’s - importance to the BJP stems partly from this scenario.