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Journalism of Courage
NEW DELHI, February 2: With less than a fortnight to go for the first round of polls, the United Front presents a picture of complete disarray. Even in a state like Jammu and Kashmir, cocking a snook at the seat-sharing exercise, the National Conference has refused to yield the Anantnag seat for the Janata Dal.
Its candidate Maqbool Dar — the Union Minister of State for Home Affairs in the I K Gujral ministry — had won the seat in the 1996 Lok Sabha elections on the Janata Dal ticket.
Nothing illustrates the divide in the UF better than the spectacle of the Samajwadi Party, one of its principal constituents, deciding to chart its own course in Maharashtra by entering into an alliance with the Congress.
Taking exception to this development, the JD today came down heavily on the SP for forging an alliance with the Congress in Maharashtra, saying it went against the Front’s unanimous decision to maintain equi-distance from Congress and the BJP.
Thus the UF in Maharashtra formally split today with theJD declaring its decision to field former additional commissioner of police Aftab Ahmed Khan against the Samajwadi Party candidate Tushar Gandhi in the high profile Mumbai North West constituency.
JD had also wanted UF to field a common candidate in Mumbai South Central but SP went ahead to nominate its candidate Sohail Lokhandwala.
In fact, the JD, which has the distinction of throwing up three Prime Ministers — V P Singh, H D Deve Gowda and his successor I K Gujral — has alleged that it has been given a raw deal by its partners in most of the states.
Irked with the DMK-TMC combine’s refusal to allot any seat to the party in Tamil Nadu, agitated JD leaders of the state today boycotted the luncheon party thrown by Prime Minister Gujral.
In state after state, the unity assiduously built by the alliance partners in the past year-and-the-half has fallen apart, the exceptions being Andhra Pradesh and, to some extent, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. In Uttar Pradesh, the SP is face to face with its alliesJanata Dal and the Communist Party of India in 27 constituencies.
With the Front partners adopting a rigid stand on the issue of allocation of seats in the electorally crucial state, CPI (M) general secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet, who was entrusted with the task of arbitrating between the SP and the JD in UP, was forced to throw his stands in despair.
