Tomorrow never dies

Call it lust for power, term it a perennial adrenaline rush. The fact is, in India no politician retires till he8217;s dead. Shukla is 73 but, having recently joined8212;and for all practical purposes created8212;the NCP in Chhattisgarh, is working with the energy of a tyro.

He8217;s commuting with the zest of a travelling salesman, juggling telephone calls, devoting hours to late night strategy sessions, plotting vengeance against Chief Minister Ajit Jogi. When NCP state treasurer Rav Avtar Jaggi was murdered in Raipur on June 4, Shukla led a mob to a night-long demonstration at the police station, eventually coercing, his critics say, the officers to register an FIR naming Jogi and his son Amit as suspects.

Till two months ago Shukla and Jogi were colleagues in the Congress. Admittedly the relationship was never easy. When Jogi became Chhattisgarh8217;s first chief minister in 20008212;the state was carved out of the larger Madhya Pradesh8212;Shukla felt slighted. After all he, along with brother Shyamam Charan Shukla, had been the face of the Congress in the Chhattisgarh region for decades. Now Jogi-come-lately had outsmarted them.

When Shukla finally quit the Congress, the party dismissed him as a has been. It took notice only after the impressive May 10 NCP rally in Raipur. NCP national leaders Sharad Pawar and P. A. Sangma also spoke at the meeting, but it was, frankly, all Shukla8217;s show.

Today the old fox is confident enough to exclaim, 8216;8216;The corrupt Jogi government and the lacklustre BJP leadership are the two factors working in my favour. I have both, leadership and experience in governance.8217;8217; Behind the hyperbole, lie some grains of truth.

For years, Chhattisgarh8217;s has been a bipolar polity. In 1998, the Congress won 49 of the 90 assembly seats. The BJP won 36, losing half a dozen other by less than 1,000 votes. It was a tight, two-party fight. With the entrance of the loose cannon called Shukla, political pundits are going back to the drawing board. Who will he hit and how much?

The BJP has not put its weight behind any one strong leader. The Congress, as usual, is packed with disgruntled elements. These are MLAs and even ministers who fleet sidelined by Jogi because of old loyalties to Shukla or Digvijay Singh, the Madhya Pradesh chief minister. Congress rebels will naturally gravitate towards Shukla, he assumes.

Much as they8217;d want to, his rivals can8217;t dismiss Shukla. About the only thing consistent in his career has been his instinct for survival. Infamous during the Emergency as Union information and broadcasting minister, he fell out with Rajiv Gandhi to become a minister in V.P. Singh8217;s government, 1989. Next he ditched Singh to join Chandra Shekhar, before moving back to the Congress.

In 1999, the party preferred his brother to him for a Lok Sabha ticket and troubles began. For a year, Shukla mobilised 8216;8216;farmers, Advivasis and youth8217;8217; through the 8216;8216;apolitical8217;8217; Chhattisgarh Sanghrash Parishad. When the moment was ripe he walked out on his mother party8212;and brother Shyama.

How do the caste equations square up? Shukla could wean away the upper caste vote from the BJP but, at about 5 to 8 per cent, this section counts for little on its on. The Congress is confident of holding on to its tribal 32 per cent and Dalit 12 per cent constituency.

Both Jogi and Shukla are banking on the 35 odd OBC communities who collectively make up 51 per cent of the Chhattisgarh electorate. For Shukla, Mr Shifty himself, an election hasn8217;t got bigger than this.