Operation Shakti

THIS may sound oxymoronic, but there was something of Viv Richards in Kalyan Singh on October 21. The arrogant roll of the hips, the slow walk, the invincible aura, as he strode into the Uttar Pradesh Vidhan Sabha. He was the last to arrive for the special session, called to test his boast of having a majority on the floor of the House. He walked up to the Opposition benches first. His hands in a namaste, he greeted the Congress and Samajwadi Party leaders. Then, ever so imperceptibly, he raised his folded hands to his forehead. And stood in front of Mayawati, looking straight into her eyes.She nodded, her lips pursed—which parted momentarily to emit a nervous giggle. But her visage was grim. The treasury benches burst into laughter.

It was the mirth of the victor. And as the chief minister headed back to seat number 1 in the Vidhan Sabha, the penny dropped for those doubtful about whether Kalyan had really managed to pull it off. The Speaker opened proceedings minutes later,with the national anthem. Jana Gana Mana over, and nearly the entire Opposition was in the well of the House. Then, the first missiles—a hard seat cover and microphone—were flung towards the Speaker and Kalyan Singh. In minutes, the leader of the Congress Legislature Party, Pramod Tiwari, grabbed hold of a plainclothes policeman ("outsider", according to Tiwari) and hit him.

Among the first to be injured were BJP ministers Lalji Tandon and Kalraj Mishra. By now, seats had been ripped out and pieces of glass from broken windows and what looked like bottles were also being hurled at BJP members and allies. Mayawati, Tiwari and Shiv Prasad Yadav, Mulayam's brother, however, had sneaked out of the House, almost as if they had given the signal and their 'troops' would do the rest. They did.

Best symbolised by the presence of the six-and-a-half foot tall BSPMLA Mukhtar Ansari, who got special permission from jail to attend the session. Ansari used his immense physical prowess to fling microphone after microphone towards BJP benches. The Speaker, Kesrinath Tripathi, ordered the security personnel in to contain the Opposition and now BJP MLAs, who had been taking evasive action till this stage, retaliated. Stragglers from the Opposition, who had taken shelter under tables, were picked on by MLAs from the ruling party and its allies. SP MLA Urmilla Yadav, who was bleeding profusely and had taken shelter under her table, was smacked on her behind repeatedly by microphone-wielding ruling alliance MLAs even as she begged for mercy.

The security forces managed to lock out the Opposition and the Speaker took up the no-trust vote. Tripathi ordered a lobby division of votes following the instructions sent by the Governor. The result—222 in favour, nil against. The Speaker didn't adjourn the assembly even at the peak of the violence, "following the governor's instructions".

LATER, as Opposition MLAs sat on dharna inside the Raj Bhawan, demanding Kalyan Singh's dismissal, a number of SP MLAs told Outlook that the violence was preplanned. "We were told to expect something like this. Some of us were not even in the House as we had to take care of arrangements in the lobby". It was thus a completely outmanoeuvred Opposition which initiated the violence once it sensed Kalyan's victory.

From the moment he took over as chief minister from Mayawati on September 21, he had been setting the agenda. In the second week of October, a senior BJP leader of Uttar Pradesh called Kalyan to discuss feelers some Opposition legislators had been sending him offering to support the BJP to form a "stable government," should the BSP pull the rug. "There is nothing to discuss, I have the thing in my bag anyway," was Kalyan's reply. This conversation took place before the rapprochement talks between the BSP and BJP in Delhi on October 12. As Kalyan told Outlook: "If they (BSP) thought we would compromise on self-respect or be dictated to, they were wrong".

Of the many steps Kalyan took in the four weeks he ran the government as a coalition to stump the BSP, three were symbolic. The government order he passed to check the misuse of the Dalit Act the day he took over; the statement made by his principal hatchet man and aide, BJP UP president Rajnath Singh, that the BJP had "enough support in the Assembly to form a government on its own if the BSP pulled out"; and the threat of a CBI inquiry against Mayawati on corruption charges—Kalyan's aides are rubbing their hands in glee at the thought of Mayawati becoming "UP's Jayalalitha" with the CBI inquiry launched against her on the NOIDA land scam. Sources say that the central leadership gave Kalyan a free hand once it was convinced that he could manage the numbers. What came as a real boon for the BJP, however, were the miscalculations by Mulayam Singh Yadav and the disarray in the BSP and Congress ranks.

Bureaucrats in Lucknow see proof that the aggressive course charted by Kalyan caught the BSP unawares in Mayawati's oversight in not withdrawing the state government's appeal pending in the Supreme Court against the re-imposition of President's rule in UP (in October 1996), despite moves initiated by her during her tenure.

The Supreme Court had directed that the state assembly could not be dissolved till the matter was pending. The Union Cabinet and Rashtrapati Bhavan spent hours with legal luminaries discussing this point alone and this, along with the Bommai case, was what the experts meant when they warned of legal difficulties if Governor Romesh Bhandari's recommendation for dissolving the House was taken on board.

The frustration in Opposition ranks which boiled over in the Assembly, however, was the result of what came to be termed "Operation Shakti": the BJP's successful numbers game which they managed to keep a secret. They finally got the support of 22 Congress, 12 BSP, 3 JD and 8 independent legislators in addition to the 175 BJP MLAs and two from their Samata Party ally. This, when even on October 20, the buzz in political circles was that the BJP would not be able to muster a majority.

By the evening, however, deputy CLP leader Naresh Aggarwal along with 18 supporters, had split the Congress and handed in a letter to the Speaker, asking to be seated separately in the Assembly. Later, three others followed suit. Once the Rubicon was crossed, Kalyan gave the go-ahead to Rajnath Singh, who worked through the night at garnering the support of the others, all of whom split their party and crossed over, or were Independents. The only exception were the BSP MLAs "caged" in the party office. That is when plan B was put into operation.