Lotus abloom in Uttar Politics

Fellow-passenger Suniti Vyas, a veteran Congressman and a member of the Allahabad University legislative council, is disillusioned with the downslide of politics in his home state. “Today’s politicians are a bunch of dal badloos(turncoats) and opportunists. Look at Shyama Charan Gupta, the Samajwadi Party candidate for Allahabad. He started with a cycle and he’s back full circle, to a cycle.”

Vyas is referring to the fact that the bidi magnate Gupta has traversed the political spectrum, starting as a Sanjay Vichar Manch candidate with a bicycle symbol, then onto the JD, BJP and the Samajwadi Party, whose symbol is the bicycle. After each change, Gupta’s bidi outlets get re-painted with his new party symbol.

BSP candidate K P Srivastava was also until very recently an active member of the BJP. “With one stroke of the pen they go from casteist to communalist and vice versa” Vyas jokes.

Another passenger butts in that the probable Congress candidate from Allahabad, Sunil Shastri is also a dal badloo who has switched from Congress to JD back to Congress. (This conversation took place last Wednesday night; by Saturday, Shastri had joined the BJP.) The BJP candidate and incumbent MP, Murli Manohar Joshi, who is alsotravelling on the same train, drops by from his first class AC cabin to say hello to fellow travellers. Minutes earlier the conversation centred on the decline of Allahabad University, what with professors like Joshi spending their time politicking instead of teaching. But the moment Joshi arrives, all the complaints are forgotten. Cordial greetings are exchanged and some former students in the compartment touch his feet.

Joshi, resplendent in an embroidered Kashmiri dressing gown, says he is confident of re-election, despite the cynics who claim that Allahabad has a history of never returning the same MP twice. Joshi points out that Lal Bahadur Shastri won two consecutive elections from Allahabad. As for the charge that he had ignored his students, Joshi notes, that unlike Delhi University, Allahabad University has a constitution that permits lecturers to take part in politics and even prescribes how many days they can take leave from their teaching assignment, depending on their political post.When thePrayag Express arrived at Allahabad station on Thursday morning, there was a jostling crowd of chanting BJP supporters to welcome Joshi. His return home to file his nomination was particularly auspicious, since Ravi Bhushan Badhawan, a local leader who was also on the train, had just announced his switch from the SP to the BJP. Badhawan was once a Congressman and best known in Allahabad as a very vocal office bearer of the Amitabh Bachchan fan club.

In Allahabad, at this point the BJP appears ahead of the competition, both in popular support and in terms of organisation. The most BJP detractors can venture at this stage is that,“Gupta will put up a stiff fight.” On Friday afternoon Atal Behari Vajpayee addressed a rally at Allahabad’s P D Tandon park and the crowds filled not just the ground but spilt onto the roadside. It was not so much the numbers — though the 35,000 strong rally was twice the size of Mulayam Singh’s gathering at the same venue a day earlier — but the responsiveness of the audiencewhich was reflective of the BJP’s upbeat mood.

A policeman on duty at the airport was sure that “UP this time is clearly Atal Behari”. Rustom Gandhi, an apolitical Parsi businessman, felt that the BJP will this time too win the majority of UP’s 85 Parliamentary seats. “It could be five more or five less than the 52 seats they won last time.”

Logically the BJP should be at a disadvantage in some respects since many of the outgoing BJP MPs have done little for their constituencies. It might have worked against the party, Gandhi feels, except that the electorate has concluded that all the politicians are cut from the same cloth anyway.

Vajpayee, who began a whirlwind tour of UP last week addressing rallies at Gorakhpur, Allahabad, Varanasi, Kanpur and Agra, is optimistic that the BJP can get “10 to 15 seats more than the last time”. His reasoning is, “We are in power. People like the government and appreciate the stability. The recent council election gives an indication of things. And the SP andBSP stand divided.”

For the SP, an additional handicap is that the Muslim voter can no longer be taken for granted by Mulayam Singh Yadav. The taxi driver in Varanasi who drove me around felt that the main issues for his Muslim community are prices and law and order. “We are sick to death of goonda gardi (lawlessness). My family are long time Congress supporters, we will vote Congress though in Varanasi the BJP appears to be ahead,” he observed.

Ikramullah, who was sitting on the steps of Chauki Ghat in Varanasi, felt that it is not impossible that a Muslim could vote for the BJP. His response to Babri Masjid was, “The whole thing is long over, why rake it up now?”All the same, Ikramullah was reluctant to say who he would vote for. “We will decide the issue only after Ramzan ends,” he observed adding that most of his community would vote the same way.

The Yadavs are confident that Muslims, whatever they claim now, will eventually vote for Mulayam. Mander Sahni, a Christian boatman, sayshis vote is definitely for Sonia Gandhi and the Congress. Standing nearby Aditya Massey, a Christian taxi driver, however, feels that Sonia has entered the race too late to make a difference to the BJP in UP. He says all the Christians will vote for the Congress but he thinks that most people here, “want to give the BJP a chance”.