The verdict is emphatic. The BJP, which had won over 80 per cent of the seats in the panchayat and corporation elections last June, has been reduced to less than 44 per cent in the nagar palika and panchayat polls held in the last week of December. Independents swept the poll, getting over 50 per cent of the seats.
Warring party strongmen Shankersinh Vaghela and Keshubhai Patel have lost heavily in their respective strongholds and accuse each other of sabotage. It was Vaghela who added Khajuraho to Gujarat's political lexicon when he engineered a revolt by 48 party MLAs against Patel (the then chief minister), spiriting them away to the temple town in the dead of night. The deposed Patel launched a campaign against the "Khajuriahs". The term, now a by word in the state, refers to those who hitched their wagons to Vaghela's.
Ironically, while Patel's faction was wiped out in his citadel of Junagadh, Vaghela's men did well there. And while Vaghela was routed on home turf Mehsana, Patel's men performed creditably. As for the Congress, in Kheda, it won the presidentship of two local bodies without lifting a finger, thanks to cross-voting by the BJP.
Chief Minister Suresh Mehta puts up a brave face, asserting that "the BJP will control 20 of the 27 nagar palikas and 42 of the 54 nagar panchayats", with a little help from independents. But unofficial estimates say the party has lost heavily in terms of the number of votes polled, as compared to the earlier civic elections.
The result in the taluka panchayat poll in Gandhinagar, BJP chief L.K. Advani's constituency, set alarm bells ringing in the state capital. The party won 15 seats to the Congress' 10, but received fewer votes overall. Mehta, though, insists it is a safe seat for the BJP. Given the fact that the BJP has been in power for less than a year, it's perhaps too early for the voter to judge its performance. But last year's pro-BJP swing seems to have run its course—a fact state VHP chief Praveen Togadia attributes directly to the BJP's internecine troubles. "It looks as if the party will suffer some losses in the Lok Sabha polls too," he says.
The Congress remains dormant and has failed to convert the BJP's troubles to its advantage. It won only one-third of the 278 seats it contested in the local polls. So far, ex-chief minister Amarsinh Chaudhry is the only party leader to have launched a mass contact programme. As for the BJP, the high command continues to impose patchwork solutions. Dissidence has been raising its head at regular intervals ever since Mehta assumed office last October. Matters came to a head when party leader A.B. Vajpayee was heckled at a public meeting in December. The culprits have yet to be brought to book.
The affair had barely died down when Mehta stripped minister Jaspal Singh of his independent charge of civil supplies and prohibition. This engendered a fresh crisis because of Singh's affiliation to the Patel camp though, curiously, it was his crusade against Union minister Buta Singh that reportedly caused his fall. He had charged Buta Singh with facilitating the release of 13 persons arrested for adulteration of petroleum. Mehta held that Singh had no business attacking a Union minister in the press without his approval.
The party leadership was forced to take cognisance of the matter for two reasons. First, Patel chose to make Singh's reinstatement a prestige issue. And second, in what was seen as a vindication of Singh's stand, the relevant files reportedly disappeared from Buta Singh's office. While publicly the high command backed Mehta, it has assured Patel and Singh that they will be compensated later. Even Mehta was persuaded to make a statement extolling Singh and endorsing his actions.
Party sources believe this is only a hiatus. The tug-of-war will resume as soon as ticket distribution for the 1996 polls commences. As Advani prepares to address a public meeting in Gandhinagar next week, things remain very much on the boil.
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