Stability, BJP style: 3rd CM in 3 yrs

The BJP central parliamentary board, which met at Atal Behari Vajpayee’s residence this evening, also decided to re-appoint Bharati as general secretary—a post she had to give up when she was suspended for indiscipline on November 10, 2004.

But that sop is unlikely to work since Bharati had made no secret of her desire to return as Madhya Pradesh chief minister or, failing that, get one of her supporters to take up the post.

Livid at the party high command’s decision to ‘‘impose’’ Shivraj Singh Chauhan without even the formality of consulting the state’s MLAs, Bharati has gone into a sulk and is refusing to meet or take calls from anyone, well-placed sources said.

A section of her supporters are egging her on to quit the BJP in protest against the party’s ‘‘anti-OBC, anti-woman’’ bias. But even if she desists from doing something quite so drastic, the problems in the Madhya Pradesh unit as well as at the national level are certain to intensify at a time when the BJP is bracing itself for a post-Advani leadership from the start of the new year.

The exit of Babulal Gaur comes as no surprise since the BJP leadership had assured rebel party MLAs—106 of whom had signed a memorandum seeking Gaur’s ouster—that he would be replaced once the Bihar elections were over.

Uma Bharati’s supporters had taken that assurance to mean that she would be made chief minister again. But even back then, BJP chief L.K. Advani is believed to have warned her that it wasn’t going to be easy, particularly since the RSS was not keen on her return.

An enraged Uma had immediately shot off a letter to RSS Sarsanghchalak K.S. Sudarshan, accusing the Sangh’s powerful joint general secretary Suresh Soni of playing partisan politics in Madhya Pradesh in cahoots with BJP general secretary Sanjay Joshi and vice-president Venkaiah Naidu.

Although she clarified later that her target was only Suresh Soni and not the Sangh as a whole, the RSS united behind Soni and openly expressed their displeasure at her letter during its national executive meeting at Chitrakoot last month.

But more than the RSS’s covert pressure, it was the fierce opposition to Bharati from within the BJP’s central team that facilitated Shivraj Chauhan’s elevation today.

Former BJP president Venkaiah Naidu, sources said, even threatened to resign if Bharati had her way in Madhya Pradesh. Advani, who retains a soft spot for Bharati, could not carry any of the younger leaders with him on the question and both he and Vajpayee gave in to the majority view at the parliamentary board meeting, sources said.

Besides Naidu, who has been smarting since Bharati banged down the phone on him during her tiranga yatra and abused him to his face, other BJP leaders—notably Arun Jaitley, Pramod Mahajan and Sanjay Joshi—too were against giving any quarter to Bharati.

Leave alone appointing Bharati as chief minister, they were also against taking the “risk” of calling a legislature party meeting to choose Gaur’s successor.

The Bharati camp is particularly miffed at this “Congress style foisting operation” because, they claim, Uma continues to enjoy the support of a majority of the party’s 173 MLAs in the state.

When Advani had informed Bharati last month that there was opposition to her return to the top post in Bhopal, she had insisted on a “test of strength” to decide the issue. Her supporters claim that she did not want to contest herself (since that would diminish her “stature”) but wanted one of her trusted MLAs to be in the fray. But Advani had said if there was a contest, it would have to be a direct one between her and Shivraj Chauhan. The party decided to avoid a contest altogether.

Bharati, who firmly believes she was responsible for the BJP’s massive victory in Madhya Pradesh and was tricked into giving up her post over the Hubli flag hoisting case, is unlikely to lie low for too long.

The options before her, sources said, included getting her MLAs to revolt against Chauhan when his formal election takes place; or bide her time for a while and strike at an ‘‘opportune’’ moment in the near future.