Uma Bharati’s lonely journey

Two years after she floated her outfit, she realised her arrogance was misplaced. Though she garnered support when she hit the road with her Ram Roti yatra in November 2005, her later attempts have progressively failed to attract attention.

Her ‘Sampark Abhiyan yatra’ that began on Monday from Maihar, a famous pilgrimage spot in Madhya Pradesh, will end in Bhopal on June 4. But this time no one is quite sure what’s prompted the yatra. With elections months away, even her party seems confused about the motive.

The party’s showing in the by-elections since she was expelled from the BJP has been poor. In fact, successive losses forced her to announce that her party will no longer take part in any by-election.

More than electoral losses, it is the loss of her bargaining power to return to the BJP that has harmed Bharati the most. Though she publicly rules out returning to her former party, insiders say she is just waiting for a call.

And it’s easy to understand why. Her pool of supporters and resources is drying up fast. Disillusioned with her constant flipflop over contesting the all-important Gujarat elections, her close confidant and former coal minister Prahlad Patel has left her. With his departure, Bharati has lost the ability to generate resources. The party she floated on April 30, 2006, has vertically split and she faces a crisis of credibility because her ranks are unsure of her next step.

In fact, in the last two years, Bharati has often showed her unpredictable side, hurling invectives at BJP leaders one minute and then trying to mend fences with them. While her invectives didn’t even spare Atal Behari Vajpayee, in January she had a change of heart and demanded a Bharat Ratna for him.

Her sentiments towards Shivraj Singh Chouhan swing similarly. One day he is a ‘bacha chor’ (a child-lifter), a reference to the fact that he was put on the CM chair she had vacated; the next day he is an elder brother. One moment there is a talk that she may align with Raj Thackeray, another moment she takes him on in Mumbai by organising a Chhat Puja.

As Bharati sets off on her yatra, it remains to be seen whether her oratory and mobilisation skills that once worked so well for the BJP, will now work for her.