Party gives go-ahead to Uma plan

Addressing party workers in Indore, Bharti said she would hand over the resignation tomorrow to the Governor. Karnataka DG & IGP S.N. Borkar said a four-member police team headed by Dharwad SP D. Roopa had already left for Mumbai and would catch a flight to Bhopal on Monday to execute the fresh non-bailable warrant issued on August 3.

That the BJP leadership, initially reluctant to accept her resignation because of the ‘‘political’’ nature of the case, has now decided to back her decision became clear when it decided to hold a meeting of the Madhya Pradesh Legislature Party in Bhopal tomorrow afternoon. BJP general secretary in charge of MP, Arun Jaitley, is slated to attend the meeting.

With a non-bailable warrant pending against her, Bharti would have no choice but to resign unless the Karnataka government pushes its withdrawal petition. Given such a scenario, the BJP has decided to go all out to make political capital from the situation and Bharti—the former heroine of the Ramjanmabhoomi movement and a mass campaigner—is ideally suited to play the role, sources said.

The BJP has already made it clear that it will portray the Hubli case as a ‘‘nationalist’’ issue, focussing on the fact that Uma is being penalised for trying to raise the tricolour, when Union ministers with criminal charges against them continue to stick to office.

‘‘Till June 21 this year, there was no case against me. The present Karnataka Chief Minister Dharam Singh did not think there was a case. It happened during Veerappa Moily’s time, he was ready to withdraw it, so was S.M. Krishna,’’ Bharti told The Indian Express over the phone. She said what turned things around was the formation of the UPA government at the Centre. ‘‘It is simply petty politics of the Congress,’’ she said.

Citing the case won by Congress MP Naveen Jindal in which the Supreme Court accepted the citizen’s right to hoist the national flag anywhere in the country, Bharti said, ‘‘Despite the court verdict, if the government wants to arrest me, it shows their intention. Such a government should be pulled down.’’

The RSS, engaged in a bitter ideological confrontation with a combative Congress, will fully back Bharti’s proposed ‘‘tiranga yatra’’ from Hubli to Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar. RSS spokesman Ram Madhav told The Indian Express: ‘‘It is very unfortunate that leaders will be punished to try and protect the honour of the national flag.

The Congress party has brought the country to a stage that those who were responsible for Partition are bedfellows in the government but who honour the tiranga will be punished. This used to happen under the British raj—we would like to know whether we are once again under British rule or Italian rule or Indian rule.’’

There is a fear in sections of the BJP leadership that Bharti’s resignation on a ‘political’ case would only legitimise the Congress and Left’s long-standing campaign against the former NDA ministers—including L.K. Advani—who had been charge-sheeted in the Babri Masjid demolition case.

The BJP has consistently maintained that being chargesheeted in a ‘political case’ as a result of ‘mass agitation’ is different from being accused in a ‘criminal case’—although there is no such distinction in the law. Bharti herself refused to resign over the Babri Masjid demolition case as she is ready to do so over the Idgah case now.

BJP sources said there are two reasons for the difference in approach. First, as chief minister of a state, she cannot possibly continue if she is placed under arrest. In the Babri case, the situation never reached such a stage. Secondly, the BJP ministers refused to resign when they were in power at the Centre; the situation is qualitatively different now that the party is in opposition. ‘‘Then not resigning gave us more political dividends because we were in power. In this case, we get far more political dividend by Bharti resigning,’’ a BJP leader said.

Since Friday when the issue rocked Parliament, BJP leaders have pointed out that the Congress was giving them fodder for mass campaigns on a platter. ‘‘First, they handed us the Savarkar issue just on the eve of the Maharahstra elections; and now they have given us the tiranga issue on which the whole Sangh Parivar can be galvanised,’’ is a common refrain.

In a day of high drama in Bhopal, 24 ministers of her cabinet too decided to quit, which the party today described as an outburst of anger against ‘‘treating hoisting of the national tricolour as a crime.’’ But the race for Bharti’s successor has begun in Bhopal. The front-runner for the post, sources said, was BJP general secretary and four term MP from Vidisha Shivraj Singh Chauhan, an OBC belonging to the Kirar (dominant in Madhya Pradesh) caste.

The names of six-term MP from Indore Sumitra Mahajan (who has recently patched up with Bharti after a long spell of bitter differences), and state home minister Babulal Gaur are also among the list of hopefuls, sources said.

(with SANTWANA BHATTACHARYA)