Mayawati’s moves have put paid to L K Advani and Venkaiah Naidu’s plan to call an early General Election. The BJP think tank first calculated that the party would benefit from a General Election this year itself cashing in on the good monsoon and the anti-incumbency mood in the four states going to the polls, all of them Congress-ruled. But the Prime Minister put a spanner in the works, insisting that the BJP should first check out the electoral mood in November before taking the plunge. The party strategists then talked of February elections, based largely on the calculation that the BJP would not be able to pull along with the mercurial Mayawati much longer and a BSP-BJP alliance in UP for the parliamentary elections would give the NDA a major boost. As it turned out, the stormy marriage ended in a messy divorce sooner than expected. The BJP’s rosy calculations would in any case not have fructified. Temperamentally, Vajpayee is not one to take unnecessary risks when so much is at stake and he would not have consented to advancing the election. The PM has made it clear he would like to go down in history as the first non-Congress PM to complete a full five-year-term and not, as he once put it, ‘‘a cut-and-paste five-year term.’’ Conditional Withdrawal When Mayawati announced she planned to dissolve the assembly at the Cabinet meeting, why did the BJP ministers not inform her that they had already sent in their resignations? The BJP’s UP leadership, getting wind of Mayawati’s intentions, hot-footed it to the Raj Bhavan before her. However, the BJP delegation took the liberty of explaining to state Governor V K Shastri, who belongs to the Sangh Parivar, that their letter of withdrawal of support was conditional. The governor could discard it if Mayawati did not follow up her threat to resign. Whose edge does BSP cut? While the BJP-BSP break-up in UP is a boon for the Congress in the event of a General Election, it might handicap the Congress in the forthcoming assembly polls. Despite the UP tie-up, Mayawati had planned to contest the assembly elections independently as she did in Jammu and Punjab. A BSP delinked from the BJP is a more attractive proposition for her vote bank of dalits and minorities. Just as in Chattisgarh V C Shukla’s rebellion against the Congress is actually harming the BJP by eating into the latter’s vote bank, in Madhya Pradesh Mayawati will cut into Congress votes. For instance, in the 1998 elections the BSP took 11 per cent of the votes and the Congress fared comparatively worse in the 120 seats where the BSP contested than in the 110 seats where the BSP did not put up candidates. In Rajasthan, the BSP’s vote share was four per cent, in Chhattisgarh 9-10 per cent and in Delhi six per cent. Taken for double ride The BJP’s continued support to Mayawati, despite her excesses, is because she shrewdly dangled a carrot before the central leadership which was too tempting to resist. The BJP hoped for a seat sharing arrangement in UP in the parliamentary election. When the BJP suggested that it should be allowed to contest 50 of the 85 parliamentary seats, Mayawati, normally a tough bargainer, graciously conceded 48 even though the BJP’s popularity rating is at an all time low in the state. Mulayam’s lieutenant Amar Singh has been equally successful in pulling wool over the eyes of the BJP leadership. In the last few months the two sworn enemies have established a working relationship, which incidentally is one reason for Mayawati’s growing suspicion of the BJP. At a recent party hosted by Chandan Mitra’s in-flight magazine Darpan, Advani listened very sympathetically to Singh’s complaints about Mayawati’s behaviour. Singh has softened up the BJP by claiming that Mulayam is interested only in power in UP and is content to let the BJP rule in Delhi. The BJP is considering asking a few of its MLAs to abstain from the no-confidence vote in Lucknow in case Mulayam’s numbers are in doubt. It forgets that once Mulayam has firmed up his perch in Lucknow he will have no more use for his old antagonist! Modi-fied Split Dheeraj Kakaria, the DD correspondent-cum-news editor in Ahmedabad is so highly thought of by the BJP that after the Gujarat elections they even raised slogans thanking him. But the director, DD Kendra in Gujarat, feels that its star correspondent has become too big for his boots after Kakaria recruited stringers for the state without his consent. The director demanded the correspondent’s transfer and the CEO Prasar Bharati K S Sarma agreed. But the Doordarshan news chief in Delhi refused to execute the order on the plea that Karkaria is too valuable to the organisation. He has won an award as the best correspondent. And as a special honour was selected to accompany the PM on one of his foreign trips. The Prasar Bharati board is backing its CEO except for the chairman M V Kamath. After all, Kamath is writing a biography of Narendra Modi.
