Gujarat BJP ranks run amuck, spill blood

Though Jhadaphia insists the BJP government is better than the Congress’s so far as law and order is concerned, and that “even now, people at large are not affected”, party ideologue Suryakant Acharya is bitter. “Vaghela’s revolt damaged the party fabric, but to counter him the party propped up all kinds of people who could be influencedby lumpen non-BJP groups,” he laments.

Consider the case of Srivastava. As an Independent, he helped Vaghela overthrow the Suresh Mehta government reportedly on the assurance of being given prime, state-owned land on Old Padra Road, Vadodara. When the Vaghela government began the process of transferring the land, senior BJP leader Nalin Bhatt filed a public interest litigation challenging the move.

The case was still pending in Gujarat High Court when elections came along. The BJP made up with Shrivastava to ensure that party candidate Jayaben Thakkar retained the Vadodara seat. When that was achieved, Shrivastava put forward the same demand: Land. Bhatt withdrew the PIL and the BJP government attempted to allot him the land till its own minister, Jaspal Singh, threw a spanner in the works. Incidentally, Singh lost his Food and Civil Supplies portfolio earlier this year after he refused to withdraw a Prevention of Black-marketing Act case against an Ahmedabad petrol-pump owner with highconnections.

But for an encapsulated version of all that’s wrong with the party, look no further than the Revashia case: murky politics, crass casteism and bad money. The death of one BJP man allegedly at the hands of two party colleagues, which triggered casteist allegations between their respective supporters, made the Chief Minister a target of all kinds of allegations and gave rise to fears of another political murder, found its echo in the corridors of power, splitting the once close-knit party along caste lines.

“The BJP leaders have no control over their ranks, while well-meaning, senior people have been sidelined. This is because everyone is driven by power and its fringe benefits,” says Vaghela, who played a major role in bringing the BJP into the reckoning before being brushed aside.

“Earlier, the entire party would come together over the smallest issues; this was our strength, on the basis of which we were to build the model state,” says Acharya. The post-Vaghela damage control has notcome about and the wrong people continue to pull the strings, he admits.