Advani’s rath may race ahead of monsoons

Bedecked with portraits of the country’s freedom fighters, Advani’s rath will trundle through the countryside to mobilise support for the BJP as a run-up to the mid-term polls, the party president predicts will be held latest by the beginning of 1998.

The yatra coincides places with important dates and people. On May 28, the birth anniversary of Veer Savarkar, for instance, Advani will be at Cellular Jail in Port Blair where the revolutionary leader was incarcerated for several years.

On June 23, the death anniversary of Jan Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee, he will be in Calcutta and on July 6, his birth anniversary, he will be in Jammu where Mookerjee died.

Rejuvenated by his exoneration in the hawala case, Advani admitted at a press conference today on the eve of his departure, that this yatra is the party’s longest and most ambitious yet. And while it may not have the emotional appeal of the Ram Rath Yatra, he said he expects it to be a successful political exercise.

“The objective is to recall the dreams of the patriots who contributed to the freedom of the country.

These dreams lie shattered today. We want to catalyse a debate on why this has happened,” he asserted.

BJP leaders are hopeful that the yatra will give the party a head start over their rivals in the expected polls. And in states like Bihar, West Bengal and Orissa, where the party’s base is expanding at a rapid rate, Advani is aiming to consolidate this support into something tangible.

“While others are practising steering committee’ politics in Delhi, we are going to the people in a mass contact programme,” he stated. “We intend to live up to our image of a party with a difference.”

He said the political developments since the Deve Gowda Government assumed office have stripped the Congress of its stability card. “This has now been transferred to the BJP,” he declared. “The Gujral Government cannot survive beyond 1997. There will be early elections by the end of the year or the beginning of 1998.”

Scoffing at Sonia Gandhi’s decision to enroll as a member of the Congress, Advani commented that this “once-great” party has been reduced to “such a pitiable shadow of itself that… it has finally pinned all its hopes for self-revival on the revival of the dynastic rule of the Nehru family”.

He said he was not unduly worried by the threats from his political rivals to stop his yatra. Samajwadi Party leaders in UP, Janata Dal workers in Bihar and Marxists in West Bengal have warned that they will not allow Advani’s rath to traverse their states.

“We have told our party workers to concentrate their fire on parties which have made anti-BJPism their creed,” Advani said. Any opposition to the yatra will sharpen the battle lines to the benefit of the BJP, party leaders feel.