All fired up for winter session, Cong feels cold

All exit polls gave an outright victory to the BJP in Madhya Pradesh and most of them veered around to the possibility of a neck-and-neck battle in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.

In fact, although three of four exit polls gave Rajasthan to the Congress, they all did so by wafer-thin margins. On Chhattisgarh, two polls which gave it to the Congress did so via similarly narrow margins.

This, political observers said, is good news for the BJP rather than the Congress. ‘‘The trouble is that the role of the Governor and the Centre becomes quite crucial in the event of a hung assembly, unless the Congress gets a clear lead as the single largest group,’’ said a senior Congress leader who did not want to be named.

Clearly, this is a setback for the Congress which, unofficially, had prepared itself for a 3-1 tally and a 2-2 as its worst case scenario.

Unless exit polls are way off the mark, the Congress’s much-touted USP-tally of 14 states will be dented and the party may have to face Parliament from a weakened position.

As it is, Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav has been gravitating to the other side, and the Congress’s relationship with the NCP has come under strain.

Even if the Congress emerges as the single largest party in Rajasthan and can form a government, there will be pressure from within to replace Ashok Gehlot as leader. It goes without saying that Gehlot stays if the party touches the magical figure of 100. But the Congress leadership was preparing a backup plan. In touch with Jaipur, it went into a huddle today and initiated ‘‘an exercise’’ to look at the various possibilities in the event of a hung assembly on December 4.

Two names are already being discussed, that of veteran leader Ram Nivas Mirdha, who is a Jat, and B D Kalla, a Brahmin who is a Minister in Gehlot’s ministry, for chief minister of a Congress-led coalition government.

Besides the split in the Jat votes, which appears to have taken place, the Congress lost steam in the last week faced with the blitzkrieg mounted by the BJP.

In Madhya Pradesh, Digvijay Singh may himself decide to make way for someone else in the event of a defeat. He had declared repeatedly that he would not take any post for ten years if he cannot lead the party to victory.

The advantage of a hung assembly would go to the BJP in Chhattisgarh because Jogi will be resisted in any coalition arrangement, the campaign having revolved around him.

NCP chief Sharad Pawar has already announced that though his party was opposed to the BJP, in Chhattisgarh it would not like to join hands with the Congress.

All through its high-voltage campaign, the BJP exhibited a killer instinct as it set about turning around an adverse situation, giving the final push in the last week of campaigning. It pressed into action virtually all its national figures, state leaders and campaign stars.

Anybody who is anybody in the BJP was out there campaigning. In contrast, the Congress relied essentially on Sonia and its chief ministers. Senior party leaders like Arjun Singh, Motilal Vora, Shyama Charan Shukla, Natwar Singh, Nawal Kishore Sharma, Chandanmal Vaid were all around but they were confined to looking after the campaigns of their respective sons. Manmohan Singh has been confined to addressing symposia. The party failed to utilise its allies like J&K CM Mufti Mohamamed Sayeed and only used Laloo Yadav towards the end.

Prime Minsiter Vajpayee addressed 51 meetings and L K Advani 62. Last week there were eight Union Ministers camping in the Kota division of Rajasthan alone from where Vasundhara Raje Scinda was seeking election.

A senior BJP leader was put in charge of a state, like Arun Jaitley of Madhya Pradesh and Pramod Mahajan of Rajasthan. It was they who were devising the strategy, giving the day-to-day thrust to the campaign, leaving the chief ministerial candidates free. There was no such backup available for the Congress CMs.