Prelude To War

Relations between Prime Minister I.K. Gujral and Congress president Sitaram Kesri have been vitiated; but, under attack from their respective parties, they may well have to remain yoked together. Particularly because the BJP emerged the clear winner in the cut-throat political contest following the BSP's withdrawal of support to the Kalyan Singh government in Uttar Pradesh, and in the process broke the shackles of political untouchability—which it feels could be a prelude to victory at the Centre.

For his part, Kesri—aware that the defection of most of his UP unit had made the survival of the BJP government in the state possible even after the BSP withdrew support—is on the defensive vis-a-vis the dissidents within his own party and furious with Gujral for not having bailed him out by imposing President's rule. Clearly, he failed to read the writing on the wall; BSP supremo Kanshi Ram had approa

ched him with a proposal for a Congress-led SP-BSP government three days before his party pulled the rug from under Kalyan Singh. He had also advised Kesri to keep a sharp eye on his UP flock. In a vain attempt to keep the UP unit together, Kesri appointed N.D. Tewari UPCC chief on October 17, two days before support was withdrawn. By then, SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav had told both Kesri and Gujral that he wanted President's rule imposed in UP following the BJP-BSP break-up. Kesri agreed. But pressure from home minister Indrajit Gupta and, to some extent, Gujral (who wasn't sure President K.R. Narayanan would toe the line) compelled UP Governor Romesh Bhandari to allow the BJP a day to prove its majority on the floor of the House. Despite Mulayam's misgivings, Kesri acquiesced.

In hindsight, most Congress and UF leaders regret this mistake, born of Kesri's complacency. A sin shared by Janata Dal president Sharad Yadav. At 6.30 pm on October 20, he declared Kalyan hadn't a prayer because "no party will split". At 7 pm, 19 Congress MLAs defected, followed a half-hour later by three of the seven JD MLAs.

When the BJP passed the floor test on the following day, Mulayam insisted it had actually flunked and had sought to cover up the fact with mayhem in the assembly. Bhandari backed him up with a report that the majority was dubious and law and order had broken down. Trying to cover up his discomfiture with bluster, Kesri warned Gujral of difficult times ahead if he did not capitulate. The duo (Mulayam on the inside and Kesri outside) railroaded a resolution on President's rule through the Cabinet—with help from CPI(M) politburo member Sitaram Yechuri and textiles minister R.L. Jalappa. It was sent to the President in the wee hours of October 22.

Narayanan, as Gujral had fully expected, shot it back in two hours flat. Came morning and BJP, Loktantrik Congress and breakaway BSP MLAs gathered at the President's doorstep, to protest the Cabinet decision. Rumours of impending resignations from the President, home minister and UF chairman H.D. Deve Gowda in the event of the Cabinet proposal being returned abounded, so that the second Cabinet meeting took place in a highly charged atmosphere.

Enter UF convenor Chandrababu Naidu. His stand against President's rule had already been put forward in the Cabinet by TDP minister Yerran Naidu, echoeing the fulminating Indrajit Gupta and Murasoli Maran (Gujral was silent but colleague S. Jaipal Reddy articulated a similar view on his behalf). But only after the President had returned the resolution did Naidu swing into action. He flew to Guwahati to address a rally on the morning of October 22, where he met West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu and apprised him of developments in Delhi. At Naidu's insistence, Basu spoke to Mulayam and Yechuri. In what amounted to a telephonic steering committee meeting, Naidu spoke to all its members including Gowda, in Jabalpur at the time. The tide turned against Mulayam.

Gupta didn't need to do much talking at the October 22 Cabinet meetings. The federal front had closed ranks behind him and the CPI(M), on Basu's instructions, changed its stance to back Gupta's. Outgunned, Mulayam vented his spleen on his Cabinet colleagues and stalked out. A three-member JD team went to persuade Kesri to see Narayanan's point of view, but was shown the door. Despite Kesri's tough stance, the UF was not willing to fly in the face of the President's objections and advice from the attorney general (who said President's Rule would not stand up in court).

BACKED by Narayanan, the BJP emerged triumphant. And none more so than party president L.K. Advani, who strengthened his position at the cost of A.B. Vajpayee, a keen advocate of the BJP-BSP tie-up whose failure is being laid at his door. The social engineering theorists within the party have suffered a setback and Kalyan's victory could herald the return of hard-line Hindutva. It was at Vajpayee's instance, however, that Rajast han chief minister Bhairon Singh Shekhawat played trouble-shooter during the crisis. As hopes of a similar coup in Delhi mount, Shekhawat is reported to be in touch with a senior Congress leader through a former prime minister. UP has provided a readymade election issue if the Congress decides on polls.

Kesri is at a double disadvantage. Not only has the Congress position vis-a-vis the UF weakened but his detractors have gathered strength, giving rise to fears that Kesri might attempt to assert himself by abruptly withdrawing support to the UF. But this is counterbalanced by apprehensions that Congressmen at the Centre, reluctant to face elections, might follow in the footsteps of the legislators in Lucknow. As if to circumvent any move on Kesri's part, Maharashtra strongman Sharad Pawar confabulated with party vice-president Jitendra Prasada and quickly issued a statement to the effect that the Congress would not destabilise Gujral. CWC member Pranab Mukherjee at the same time dismissed fears of the Congress breaking, "because there is no Naresh Aggarwal (leader of the breakaway Congress MLAs) in Delhi".

An MP close to Kesri admitted: "We need time to recover. The future of the UF depends on how long Kesri takes to reassert his authority over the party and how long the party takes to get into shape for elections." Prasada is upset because some partymen are accusing him of having joined hands with Bhandari, at the instance of P.V. Narasimha Rao, to engineer the split (out of pique at Tewari's appointment) and this could spell trouble for Kesri in the near future. The hawks in the Congress are not willing to climb down on the Jain Commission report and hope it will snowball into an issue big enough to pull down the UF.

More headaches for Kesri are brewing in Gujarat, where the Congress leader inexplicably exposed another flank to the BJP by withdrawing support to chief minister Shankersinh Vaghela and in Karnataka, where prodigal son S. Bangarappa wants to quit the Congress and is negotiating a tie-up with Gowda. For Kesri, the imperative now is to turn challenge into opportunity. In an effort to salvage some scraps of dignity, the Congress spin-doctors now insist that the split in the Congress is a small price to pay for the break-up of the BJP-BSP combine. It hopes to woo the minorities on this plank. Reduced to the role of a mediator in UP, it wants an SP-BSP alliance before general elections. But that is unlikely to happen overnight, as Mulayam is wary of the mercurial Mayawati.

Neither the BSP nor the SP have much option but to court each other. Mulayam's gameplan in UP has come apart completely. He had aggressively wooed the BJP's upper caste vote-bank, accusing the party of being hand-in-glove with Mayawati's aggressively pro-Dalit administration. But the defection of upper caste MLAs from both the Congress and the BSP to the BJP has clearly shown where the brahmin and thakur sympathies lie. "We are not going to change our line on the upper castes," claims Mulayam's chief aide, Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh, who commands a following among the Rajputs.

It was clear that there were other factors at work in the defection of Aggarwal et al. The upper caste MLAs were uncomfortable with Kesri's pro-backward and pro-Dalit stance. Jagdambika Pal, till now an Arjun-Tewari loyalist and veritable icon of secularism, declared: "This excuse of stopping communal forces is being used to create the greater evil of caste polarisation. I didn't even speak to Kalyan Singh. If I have joined forces with the BJP it is in the hope that it will provide a desperately needed stable government."

 For his part, Mulayam feels the UF's secular credentials have been tested and found wanting. His closest allies in the front—the Left parties—did not back him. For the moment, it's "ekla chalo re...because everyone is pursuing their own agenda", says Amar Singh. He puts the blame squarely on Gujral: "He has failed and been exposed as a weak prime minister. The JD, with its lion's share of power at the Centre, could not hold on to its MLAs."

Sharad and Gowda, despite having taken radically different stands on UP, have united to lambast Gujral. "Was the SP given a chance to prove its majority when its government fell?" asked Sharad. Gowda was against President's rule. Jalappa, close to Laloo Yadav, also supported Mulayam. The north-south divide in the UF has thus become clear. While fighting the BJP may be an imperative in the north, for the federal front and the Left, preventing the misuse of Article 356 was more important.

While Gujral and his loyalists hope that fear of the BJP will keep the UF and Congress together at the Centre, there is no telling how Kesri will react. The more the pressure exerted on him by party dissidents, the more aggressive his posture vis-a-vis the UF.

BSP MLA Choudhary Narendra Singh, who had earlier in the day resigned as advisor to Kanshi Ram, is thought to have managed to help four MLAs "escape" from the BSP office that night. The others crossed over to the BJP in the lobby of the Vidhan Sabha. "They came in with us, but slipped out one by one and before we realised it they were gone," said a flummoxed Farid Mahfouz Kidwai, BSP MLA. "One MLA literally crossed the floor of the House. He was sitting next to me and before the proceedings began, when he saw that the others were already sitting over on the other side, ran across to join them," added a CPI(M) MLA.

A.B. Vajpayee's men in UP, Lalji Tandon and Kalraj Mishra, who had promoted the BSP-BJP power-sharing plan, were kept completely out of the picture. In fact, Rajnath Singh, irrigation minister Om Prakash Singh and Harak Singh Rawat, MLA, formed the troika which managed the show for Kalyan. Significant, as Kalyan is now the supreme BJP leader in UP, social engineering be damned.

The analysis of party insiders is that they have managed to break out of the can't-form-a-government-without-an-alliance trap and the entire UP incident has shored up support for the BJP to better their tally substantially in the next general elections. The assessment is that the upper castes, a section of which was drifting towards Mulayam, will now stay "at home" and that Kalyan's spectacular success will buttress the substantial non-Yadav OBC support the party already has due to the appeal of the Ayodhya slogan. With an eye on Dalit turf, Kalyan says "the BSP support is based on a particular Dalit community. Not all Dalits are BSP supporters."

But the quibble over their number has already begun. Though the BJP claims that more BSP MLAs will cross over, Mayawati on October 24 wrote to the Speaker, seeking the expulsion of the 12 BSP MLAs under the provisions of the Anti-Defection Law. Mayawati has upped the ante by asking the Speaker whether they had written to him like the Congress MLAs did.

The Speaker's position, however, is that in a lobby division par-tywise counting of votes is not done. And that no letter has been written by the BSPMLA s who crossed over, but there is no time limit for recognising a split. Music for the BJP which has maintained that another split in the BSP, taking the number of MLAs supporting them to 23, "is imminent". The Speaker's office has also said that he will take appropriate action on the demand to declare the 12 BSP legislators "defectors" only after investigations.

The Congress has suspended the three MLAs who went to the Speaker separately and N.D. Tiwari told Outlook that he is "coordinating his moves with the BSP to prove that without these 15 MLAs, the BJP does not have a majority." Kalyan's main problem is how to accommodate those who crossed over. Already there is acrimony about how many of the 22 Congress MLAs, some of whom are not exactly of Gandhian colours, should be made ministers.

The only hope for the Opposition in UP of making a significant difference would seem to be a loose, "secular alliance" to take on the BJP. But that is fraught with difficulties. The BSP is now running hard to stand still; its attempts to woo non-Dalit sections of the population will have to be put on the backburner to concentrate on keeping its existing base intact, as all the parties in UP are eyeing it. Mayawati said on September 21 that she would "join hands with anybody to finish off the BJP" but had to retract a couple of days later because of a reported rift with Kanshi Ram who is sticking to his long-term plan: "Anybody who is willing to become a ladder for the BSP will be used".

But it is Mulayam who is truly hoist on his petard. He rejected the idea of a "secular" government under Congress leadership which the BSP had agreed to after it withdrew support. "If he had agreed, the governor could have avoided giving Kalyan any time to prove his majority as there would have been a viable claim for an alternative arrangement," felt a number of Muslim SP and BSP MLAs. Even Mulayam, his Muslim-Yadav base intact and anti-Dalit rhetoric forgotten, is now veering towards an anti-BJP grand alliance, at least for the time being. The Congress, though keenest on such an alliance, has only a leader to offer to the proposed arrangement.

As for the governor, Kalyan Singh says he will not rest till "Bhandari is recalled" but the man in the hot seat, who most constitutional experts agree played the most dubious role of all, is most certainly resting. Sources in Raj Bhawan say he has barely been out of his living quarters on the first floor of Governor House and is spending his time listening to classical music on his CD player. And planning a holiday in Nainital.