Two ladies and a trampled govt

She also demonstrated yet again that she was the power behind the Delhi throne, and this reinforces her importance back home. For five days, the power structure in Delhi danced to her tune. The Government bent over backwards to please her. Vajpayee attended a dinner hosted for her, and even sent his foster grand-daughter with flowers to welcome her at the airport. She, on her part, had not even attended the meeting addressed by the Prime Minister in Tamil Nadu when he went there recently.

Normally, it is the Prime Minister who is asked tolight a lamp at the start of a function if he is present. But at a seminar organised by the Women’s Political Watch, the organisers asked all the main guests on the dais, including Vajpayee, Jayalalitha and I.K. Gujral, to come and light the lamp, apparently to get around the tricky situation of who to give greater importance to the Prime Minister or the Puratchi Thalaivi.

Congress chief Sonia Gandhi’s appearance at the tea party hosted by Janata Party chief Subramanian Swamy came as the cherry on the cake for Jayalalitha. In the past eight years, heads of state and government have gone to call on Sonia at 10 Janpath, ignoring protocol, all of which has given her a certain standing. And Sonia decided to go to Swamy’s bash, the unabashed purpose of which was to “honour Jayalalitha”, who continues to be an ally of the BJP, against which the Congress has stepped up its attack.

Had the Congress chief decided to accept Swamy’s invitation at the outset, in the natural course, it might possibly have been seenas no more than a social call and possibly an attempt to create goodwill with a potential ally. But after the hype, it is being seen as part of a Congress attempt to topple the BJP Government.

There is little doubt that the handshake between the two most powerful women in India today has created a climate of uncertainty regarding the future of the Vajpayee Government. Concerned that Vajpayee might consolidate his position after the famous Lahore bus ride, the Congress had first struck back on Bihar (even though it turned out to be a major setback for the party). The Congress is also aware that the Sangh Parivar has decided against rocking the Vajpayee boat.

If there is one thing that can be said after Swamy’s party, it is that both the Congress and AIADMK will now consider reviving their alliance in Tamil Nadu as and when elections take place for the Lok Sabha, and Jayalalitha has indicated as much. This however is not going to be an easy proposition, for Jayalalitha is not only a hard bargainer but shehas also proved to be undependable. The Congress will find it very difficult to improve on the BJP’s performance in acceding to her demands. The BJP is suspected to have retired a high court judge prematurely, transferred Income-Tax officers, shifted the head of the Enforcement Directorate and taken the far-reaching step of transferring cases from special courts to ordinary courts, all to please her.

However, there is no reason why Jayalalitha should invite a general election at this time, when her allies of 1998 — the Pattali Makkal Katchi, the Marumalarchi DMK and V.K. Ramamurthy — are no longer with her. (For that reason, she will need the Congress as much as the Congress needs her.) The only bait she is likely to bite is a Congress promise to dismiss the M. Karunanidhi government in Tamil Nadu, which she sees as the panacea of all her problems. Theoretically speaking, the Congress could sack the DMK government on coming to power by holding it responsible for the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. It couldeven skirt around the need for ratification by Parliament by plumping for a general election soon after. But politically, it would have to weigh the possibility of a southern backlash if Karunanidhi, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and Karnataka CM J.H. Patel decide to make common cause.

Therefore, the Congress too cannot put all its eggs in Jayalalitha’s basket to pull down the Government.

In any case, it is premature to say whether the Congress is interested in the early demise of the Vajpayee Government. Though under pressure from a section in her party to go in for the kill in the Budget session of Parliament, form an interim government for a couple of months and then opt for year-end polls along with elections to nine Assemblies, Sonia does not seem to have made up her mind yet.

Left to herself, she would like to see the results of the Assembly polls before deciding her time-table. At the end of the day, she has to contend with the four states accounting for 220 seats in the LokSabha — Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal — where the Congress does not add up to much. Meanwhile, she wants to keep the heat on the BJP Government. Her overtures to Jayalalitha gave an impetus to this process.