Vajpayee’s task cut out

The BJP’s allies have had little in common in the past with the BJP or with each other. They had reservations about the BJP’s pro-Hindu agenda. That’s why they will be much more aggressive in extracting the best possible price for themselves in return for supporting the Government.

It will be very difficult for Vajpayee, for instance, to ignore Subramanian Swamy both to placate Jayalalitha and to minimise his nuisancevalue. But it is an irony that he will be in the Vajpayee Cabinet when he has fought the BJP for almost two decades. He will also be breaking bread with Ramakrishna Hegde whose government he was instrumental in toppling. He is ironically the nominee of Jayalalitha who he has fought for years till she made peace with him.

Jayalalitha’s flip-flop on joining the government is only a foretaste of things to come. She is laying down tough conditions for joining the government which include the sack of the Karunanidhi ministry. The AIADMK chief would like to make sure that there is a reasonable chance of the BJP government lasting before she decides to enter it. Till then she would like to maintain a distance.

The importance of being Jayalalitha — and Mamata Banerjee — is the links they have with the Congress, particularly with Sharad Pawar. The failure of the BJP to run the Government may sendJayalalitha scurrying to the Congress with her allies and the non-BJP family then may be able to do without the TDPand the DMK.

The allies of the BJP have a reputation of being more temperamental than many other groups.

Even before the National Agenda is worked out on the common minimum programme, George Fernandes sent jitters in the MNCs about what the Government might do. He too may demand the sack of Laloo Yadav in Bihar.

Whether it is Jayalalitha, Om Prakash Chautala, Buta Singh or Sukh Ram (who promised to support the party in Himachal Pradesh), they will compel the BJP to help wash off their sins and where this leaves the party’s image remains to be seen.

This may be tantamount to a demand for the withdrawal of cases against them and the initiation of ones against their foes. The Congress did that with the UF.

As a result, the party was comparatively untouched by scams during the Gujral rule, though both Laloo Yadav and Prafulla Mahanta could not escape the CBI net in the fodder or the LoC scandals.

The BJP will face its greatest difficulty in running Parliament with the kind of configuration that existsin the present Lok Sabha. Its first challenge will be the confidence vote and assuming it crosses that hurdle with the aid of abstentions from TDP, this will be the story every time a Bill has to be passed.

With the Budget session around the corner entailing the passage of the Finance Bill and demands for grants, even a cut motion can bring down the government if even one or two members of the saffron family play truant or fall sick — or are delayed with trains running late!

This will be a nerve-wracking exercise for even the hardiest of Parliamentary Affairs Ministers, a job most important in the BJP government.

Given the present situation, not only will the BJP be called upon to keep its allies happy, it will also have to take along the opposition. Consensus politics will become a tactical necessity for the party.

The party may scrape through a confidence vote but can it risk a defeat, say on the election of the Lok Sabha Speaker? It will be forced to go in for decision-making byconsensus.

Narasimha Rao also made a virtue of necessity by talking of consensus to run his minority government and later acquired a majority by breaking other parties. But the siutation was very different in 1991.

It is an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation today.

The composition of the 12th Lok Sabha does not make this an easy task. The Congress is not likely to split nor will the Left parties or the Samajwadi Party. The vulnerable parties are the Janata Dal and J H Patel is already making favourable noises to save his government in Karnataka, the RJD and the BSP.

They happen to be in areas where the BJP is strong.

Perhaps Vajpayee who was once called “gurudev” by Narasimha Rao should now take the advice of “gurughanta,” a compliment Vajpayee paid him.