Ex-RJP chief is now Cong’s great white hope

The silver lining to the Congress cloud is the recent merger of Vaghela’s Rashtriya Janata Party with it. In Vaghela the Congress has, after a long time, acquired a political leader of stature; someone who’s known all over the state, who knows the BJP inside out and who can match the aggression of the Sangh Parivar. Madhavsinh Solanki, who was instrumental in bringing Vaghela to the Congress, touts thelatter’s “mobility, state-level stature, leadership qualities and charisma”.

Not that the Congress didn’t have leaders; in fact, there were too many of them, including a clutch of chief ministers put out to pasture. Unfortunately, they were not quite informed of this status, with the result that state party chief C D Patel was tossed and buffeted by different forces like a feather in a storm.

Vaghela brings with him — mathematically, at least — the votes polled by the RJP in the last elections. And added to those polled by the Congress, they exceed the BJP’s in at least eight constituencies. Explains C D Patel, “Vaghela and the Congress have a common support base, like the Kshatriyas and OBCs. Last time we split each other’s votes; this helped the BJP.”

When the drawing boards are put away, however, and theory becomes practice, what does Vaghela spell in these elections? Solanki believes that, with some effort, Vaghela could renew the Congress’s winning combination of Kshatriyas, Harijans, Adivasiand Muslims (KHAM). But such a revival appears a remote possibility now; the BJP has made deep inroads into the Harijan and Adivasi vote-banks and the Congress has scored a self-goal of sorts by not fielding a single Muslim candidate. (Reason, according to C D Patel, was to prevent the BJP from polarising the communal issue).

Instead the party has, for the first time, fielded 15 Patel candidates, apparently because the BJP has always been giving a lion’s share of tickets to this influential community. The unofficial line, though, is that the decision was taken to ensure that Vaghela didn’t grow too big.

So there we have Vaghela’s Problem No 1: His arrival has sparked off intra-Congress rivalry. So much so that some senior party leaders lobbied with the high command to field Vaghela from Gandhinagar against L K Advani. The aim? Vaghela would lose and go into political oblivion.

The high command didn’t of course and instead gave him Kapadvanj and a lightweight BJP rival. Vaghela now has ample time tocampaign for the party, taking things easy in his own constituency though Vajpayee has already been there. He’s criss-crossing the state spouting anti-BJP rhetoric. It’s an opportunistic party, he says, which sought votes for construction of the Ram temple and then dropped the issue from its agenda, which always blamed Sheikh Abdullah for Jana Sangh founder Shyama Prasad Mukherjee’s death but has now joined hands with his son Farooq, and which could not deliver even on its little promise of renaming Ahmedabad as `Karnavati’. “Can you trust such a party?” Vaghela asks crowds rhetorically.

His sharpest barbs are saved for old bete noire Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel, whom he accuses of incompetence, insensitivity to problems like water scarcity, failure to curb the anti-minority activities of Sangh Parivar hardliners and allowing his relatives to make money by meddling in the administration.

The BJP has been trying to play down the Vaghela factor. “They say Vaghela’s votes will be transferred to theCongress, but Vaghela is finished; most of his cadre had crossed over to the BJP before he joined the Congress,” says Keshubhai. Nevertheless, the state government has been, for some time now, regularly coming out with details of “scandals during the Vaghela regime”, which Vaghela and the Congress dismiss as symptoms of the BJP’s “nervousness and frustration”.

Will Vaghela revive the Congress? Well, when you’re down, the only way is up.