Sonia’s entry may upset BJP’s applecart

Although she has yet to make a formal move, most political leaders feel that if polls are declared on the Jain Commission issue, she will definitely campaign for the Congress and maybe contest herself.

This is the BJP’s worst nightmare come true. Driven by a primeval fear of the Nehru-Gandhi family, the top leadership of the party and its strategists in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) have convinced themselves that Sonia can win one election for the Congress. At a time when the big parties are only aiming to touch the 200 mark in the Lok Sabha to have the first crack at government formation, they feel that the Gandhi name alone could add enough seats to the Congress kitty to overturn the BJP’s applecart.

“She could create a sympathy wave for the Congress as a widow. It has to be tested electorally but given the place the Nehru-Gandhi family occupies in the history of this country, she may pull it off,” conceded a long-time member of the BJP’s think-tank.

Although an officebearer maintained that the BJP would conduct an aggressive campaign against her, using the foreigner label and the Bofors scandal to tar her, others in the party feel that this could boomerang.

The confusion and apprehension within the BJP over the “Sonia effect” are obvious in the sudden change of mood among the top leaders. From demanding mid-term polls ever since the Deve Gowda Government was formed, both Vajpayee and Advani are now making desperate overtures to “thinking” Congressmen, offering to form an alternative coalition government to escape the dreaded elections.

For the past several days, the party’s top brass has been huddled in long strategy sessions in Vajpayee’s residence to find a way to counter the new factor threatening to overwhelm them.

Electoral chemistry apart, their fears are compounded by the relentless logic of electoral arithmetic. Having inducted 12 breakaway MLAs from the BSP into the Kalyan Singh Government in Uttar Pradesh, BJP leaders realise that their hopes of a poll alliance with Kanshi Ram have all but evaporated.

In fact, they may have ended up doing precisely what they tried so hard to avoid and driven the BSP into a loose seat adjustment with the Congress and the Samajwadi Party in UP — a potent combination which has the potential of storming their citadel in North India.