BJP top brass tells Kalyan, rebels to mend fences

This was the first time that all three top party leaders, spoke to UP dissidents jointly. Earlier, dissidents used to call on national leaders separately.

Kalyan was almost on quarterly lease from the party as BJP leadership would say, “As of now, there is no plan to replace Kalyan Singh as UP Chief Minister”. The assurance would silence the dissidents only for a short while before raising their demand all over again.

More than 50 MLAs had been demanding that Kalyan be replaced with somebody more amenable to suggestions. They had also called almost alltop leaders of the party on the eve of confidence vote of the Vajpayee Government last month.

The issue was raised at BJP’s national executive on Saturday evening by Rajnath Singh who while presenting status report on UP’s political situation, vaguely stressed need for "better coordination" in the state.

The next speaker, BJP’s national general secretary, Sanghpriya Gautam was more categorical in demanding Kalyan’s replacement. Gautam apprehended a shift of BJP’s upper caste vote bank to the Congress if latter had a poll tie-up with the BSP, especially if Priyanka Gandhi hit the campaign trail.

Kalyan camp immediately, countered the demand by disclaiming possibility of a BSP-Congress tie up which benefitted only the Congress and not the BSP. “We have already seen results of such a tie-up in 1996 Assembly polls,” claimed Ramashish Rai, national president of BJP’s youth wing. He was supported by leader of BJP legislature party in UP Vidhan Parishad Vindhyavasini Kumar, Jyotsna Srivastava, MLA, andRajveer Singh, MP.

The spat between the two camps in the national executive prompted the BJP top brass to convene an emergency meeting of all the warring factions at the Prime Minister’s residence and summoned Kalraj Mishra and Lalji Tandon from Lucknow, to thrash out differences between the UP leaders.

The trio of Vajpayee, Advani and Thakre, first listed to views of Kalyan, Rajnath, Kalraj and Tandon separately from 8 pm, before addressing all the four simultaneously.

Kalyan is learnt to have blamed the media for "blowing UP crisis out of proportion". “There are only 5-7 disgruntled MLAs who can easily be identified with their mentors. The crowd of 50 MLAs, being reported by the media, comprises mainly of corporators and MLCs,” he said.

His detractors complained of Kalyan’s autocratic behavior, tendency to create extra-constitutional power centres and cocking a snook at Central party leadership.

The UP leaders were told in categorical terms that there was no question of changing state’s chiefminister just before the elections. They were also told to project a picture of unity in BJP’s state unit by telling their respective supporters to keep silence till the polls.