Long Distance Vision

TWELVE days is normally too small a period for a minister to have any tiffs with bureaucrats. But Sushma Swaraj, information minister in the Atal Behari Vajpayee government, had one with senior officials in her ministry. She managed to overrule bureaucratic objections and got Parliament proceedings on April 27 and 28—when the Lok Sabha debated the vote of confidence—telecast live. The idea was to gain maximum political mileage out of the fall of the BJP government and exploit the sympathy of the electorate glued to Doordarshan for the two-day proceedings.

With oratory unmatched by political rivals, Prime Minister Vajpayee projected the BJP as a martyr crucified at the altar of power by "an unprincipled, ambitious, political gang-up". That the decision to go in for a live telecast was politically motivated became obvious as Vajpayee rendered the vote of confidence infructuous by announcing just before the vote, at the end of the two-day parliamentary debate, that he would be heading for the Rashtra-pati Bhawan to hand in his resignation. The crown which he donned at noon on May 16 came tumbling down on May 28 with his resignation at 6 pm.

Vajpayee had tried to give an impression that he was seeking consensus on national issues as a compulsion of the fractured mandate, by forming a Cabinet with at least four of 12 members without a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) background—Ram Jethmalani, Sushma Swaraj, Sikander Bakht and Jaswant Singh—and later by excluding major issues on the pro-Hindutva agenda such as the abrogation of Article 370, Ayodhya temple and Uniform Civil Code from the President's address. But, as he sensed that this was not going to get him the support of the 70-odd MPs required to win the vote of confidence, Vajpayee got back into saffron jargon. He declared: "We need a two-third majority of our own to carry on the kind of amendments we want (the issues on the pro-Hindutva agenda)". The hardliners within the BJP—mainly those from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal who were sore at the Government's flirtation with the softline under Vajpayee—once again saw their victory in the turn-around. For, Hindutva continues to remain the party's mascot.

 In an attempt to turn defeat into victory, the BJP's Central Parliamentary Board met on May 29 and decided that starting from June 3, Vajpayee would be felicitated at different parts of the country as someone who genuinely tried to "respect the people's mandate and to change the country's fortune". Five days after the conclusion of the campaign at Patna on June 16, the over 150-member national executive will meet at Bhopal to assess the political implications of the BJP's rise to power and consequent fall, as well as the other developments that followed. "There is a general feeling that the unprincipled gang-up of political parties has deprived the country of a good government", says BJP president L.K. Advani. 

"The fall of the BJP government would spell doom for the country in general and the Muslim community in particular. What the community does not realise is that the BJP is no less secular or no more communal than any other party. The BJP would have proved its secular credentials and transformed the society," says Syed Nazmuddin, chief executive officer of Lunar Diamonds. It seems the 13-day rule and Vajpayee's image did some magic.

From the RSS to the BJP, there seems to be a consensus that not accepting the President's invitation to form the government would have amounted to running away from responsibility. Alternatively, S.S. Barnala, Akali leader and BJP ally, tried—though unsuccessfully—to solicit support for a 'national government' which would be under Vajpayee by virtue of his being leader of the single largest party. But with no such possibility looming in the political landscape, the BJP once again seems all set for the politics of opposition.

Building up the party now seems the BJP's main priority. The assessment is that a mid-term poll is not too far away as the 'unprincipled gangup' is not going to last too long. With this in mind, the BJP took an uncompromisingly hard posture against the second bout of dissident activities in Gujarat—the formation of the Mahagujarat Asmita Manch by dissidents in protest against loyalists beating up senior minister Atmaram Patel and stripping off his clothes in Vajpayee's presence last month. Shankersinh Vaghela folded up the Manch within hours of Advani's directive either to "wind it up or face the consequences".

But much will depend on how the new Government performs. After all, the BJP will now be the main Opposition, and more than highlighting its own programmes, the party will try to gain by exposing the new Government and its main ally, the Congress.