Too clever by half

Kalyan Singh’s performance in this regard is no better than that of former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, who is alleged to have paid huge bribes to four JMM MPs to come out victorious in a trial of strength in the Lok Sabha. Even if the MPs had taken the allegedly huge bribes, it is no patch on what the defector-turned-ministers can earn if they so desire by misusing their authority as borne out by the pile of money discovered from the pooja room of a former Telecom Minister. Otherwise, why should there be such a clamour to become ministers?

Of course, for the BJP, which never tires of claiming that it stands for certain values in public life, such stratagems are not new. When it fell short of a majority in Rajasthan in the last elections, it was by inducting some independent legislators into his Cabinet that Chief Minister B.S. Shekhawat made up for the deficiency. It is an altogether different matter that while Rao is facing criminal charges, Shekhawat is hailed as a master strategist well-versed in the art of realpolitik. Even so, the Rajasthan Chief Minister’s performance pales into insignificance when compared to what his counterpart in U.P. has accomplished.

One other person who has been vindicated is Kalyan Singh’s predecessor and BSP leader Mayawati. It is now quite apparent that even when the BJP was cohabiting with the BSP, Kalyan Singh was engineering a split in the BSP. How could she have continued extending support to him when he was busy splitting her own party, and that too when the two sides had reached a gentleman’s agreement to refrain from such unhealthy practices?

By proving too clever by half, the BJP has made smaller parties wary of entering into any alliance with it in future. For a party which can hope to come to power at the Centre only by having strategic alliances with smaller, regional parties, this is a major setback, although it might not realise it in its hour of triumph in Lucknow. The collapse of the BJP-BSP alliance also signifies the collapse of the BJP’s dream of bringing resurgent Dalits into the party fold.

The partisan manner in which the Speaker conducted the proceedings of the House and paid scant regard to the provisions of the anti-defection law, whereby those BSP legislators who voted for the Government in defiance of the party whip would have lost their seats in the House tells a tale of its own. It proves the point that Mayawati and Kanshi Ram were not wide of the mark when they suspected the Speaker’s bona fides and wanted him to step down as a condition for allowing Kalyan Singh to become Chief Minister.

However, it is on the credibility front that the BJP has suffered the worst setback. Its claim of being a party with a difference stands thoroughly exposed. That its leaders are no different from those of other parties when it comes to subserving their own vested interests was brought home when a dyed-in-the-wool RSS leader like Shankersinh Vaghela did not have any qualms in splitting the party to become the Chief Minister of Gujarat. Madanlal Khurana’s pique over the denial of chief ministership to him was no different from the reaction of say, S. Bangarappa in Karnataka when the latter was treated in a similar manner. The V.C. Shukla-Arjun Singh factional feud in the Madhya Pradesh Congress is no worse than the V.K. Saklecha-Sunderlal Patwa war in the state unit of the BJP.

By allowing Kalyan Singh to bend every rule to come to power, the BJP has forfeited all its claims to the high moral ground. It does not require much prescience to realise how hollow its denunciation of Laloo Prasad Yadav was when he refused to quit as Chief Minister even when the CBI had made known its intention to chargesheet him in the fodder scam. In fact, by allowing Kalyan Singh, who is threatened with a chargesheet for his questionable role in the demolition of the Babri Masjid, to be sworn in as Chief Minister, the BJP has behaved in much the same manner. Similarly, the BJP, which used to ridicule Laloo Yadav for his jumbo cabinet, did not have any hesitation in allowing Romesh Bhandari the vicarious pleasure of swearing in the largest number of ministers and possibly finding a mention for the same in the Guinness Book of World Records.

All this constitutes a body blow to those sections of voters who genuinely believed that the BJP, with its supposed emphasis on discipline and fair play, would be able to usher in a clean, responsive government. It is on this assumption that they have been voting for the party even in states like Kerala where they knew that the party had not the ghost of a chance. It is they who feel cheated by Kalyan Singh’s genuflection before rank opportunists and criminals, who are now his honourable Cabinet colleagues.

The argument that the ministers with a shady past were not fielded by the party carries as little conviction as the BJP’s efforts to disclaim responsibility for all the decisions taken during the regime of Mayawati.

With such a large number of ministers, many of whom Singh would not even be able to recognise, let alone know by name and the portfolios they are supposed to handle, the BJP will hardly be in a position to implement its agenda. What use is power if it cannot be used for the fulfillment of the promises made in the party’s manifesto?