WITH grumbling loyalists and untrustworthy Congress support not making for a comfortable domestic position for Gujarat Chief Minister Shankarsinh Vaghela, he is already looking beyond the limitations at home. And so, a place in the United Front and bases in other states have taken precedence over the conflicts in Gujarat.
On a two-day visit to Mumbai last week, Vaghela clarified that he would join the United Front if he was invited. He had already made his position clear when he got Rajya Sabha MP Kanaksinh Mangrola to resign, a day after Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda visited Gujarat on October 31. The seat was on offer to Yogendra Alagh, Union minister for science and technology, who is not an MP and needs to get elected to either House. Had the Election Commission permitted a Rajya Sabha by-poll from the state, Alaghs problem would have been solved and a Vaghela man could have found a berth at the Centre for help rendered.
Vaghelas gravitation to the United Front will also help him with a new constituency among the OBCs and minorities. The by-polls to a Lok Sabha and two assembly seats in Gujarat, held just before Vaghela was sworn in as chief minister on October 23, showed him that his hopes could not rest on the BJP supporter and that his future depended on the KHAM (kshatriyas, Harijans, adivasis and Muslims) votebank. Since adivasis have traditionally been with the Congress, which supports his government, Vaghelas attention is focussed on the OBCs and Muslims. But he will have to contend with the Left parties, which are suspicious of his RSS past.
In Mumbai, Vaghela met filmstar and Samajwadi Party leader Raj Babbar, whose Uttar Pradesh election campaign he had supported. Vaghelas meeting at Babbars residence, which was attended by Samajw-adi Party MLAs, helped him get close to the United Front besides garnering the support of minorities, which constitute 15 per cent of the Gujarat electorate.
Muslims in Mumbai especially have shifted their loyalties to the Samajwadi Party after falling out with the Congress. So the alliance could be a good bridge for Vaghela to get around the stigma of a past which began in the RSS and moved on to the BJP. He projects his Rashtriya Janata Party as secular and debunks the BJP as being "remote controlled by the VHP and the Bajrang Dal" besides being driven into "deep discontent, with state units in a mess".
That he has been striving to brew trouble in the BJP is well known. In Maharashtra, where his former party runs a government in alliance with the Shiv Sena, Vaghela has initiated a two-pronged effort. One is to make attempts to meet Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackerayeven the thought of such a meeting sends the BJP into a flutter; the other is to cultivate BJP dissidents.
Unfortunately for Vaghela, during his Mumbai visit, Thackeray was out of town and so were the main BJP dissidents, Wamanrao Parab and Madhu Deolekar. But Deole-kar, a senior state leader, clarifies: "Our differences are with Pramod Mahajan and his functioning. We have no difference with the party ideology." And though Vaghela met some dissidents and has been establishing contact with others, their numbers are insufficient for him to create a base that could challenge or stir the BJP in Maharashtra.
Besides, before thinking of Delhi and Maharashtra, the Gujarat chief minister has to pay attention to the discontent in his own backyard. His first basea block of 26 legislators belonging to the Mahagujarat Janata Party headed by Dilip Parikh which was the first to split from the BJPVaghela had to win over the rest: Independents, the Congress and the BJP MLAs who later shifted allegiance. In cobbling together support, he has had to make promises to all and sundry. So, as a BJP leader points out, "he now has a problem keeping them together, and looking after his loyalists". Former ministers C.K. Raulji, Vipul Chaudhari, Mansinh Chauhan and Khumansinh Vasia are among those who have not found a berth in his ministry even after its second expansion. The third is due, but so are the promises.
As for Congress support, it was offered in the face of opposition from Delhi and within the state unit, and cant be taken for granted. There was a controversy of sorts when a state minister, after he was beaten up in his constituency recently, blamed the Congress and suggested that BJP workers had come forward to help him. Though the issue has been glossed over, it pushed Vaghela into his first face-off with the Congress, on whom he is dependent. For the chief minister the situation in Gujarat is like walking a tightrope. But Vaghelas advantage is that tightropes are his speciality.
Tags