Kalyan Singh,once described as the hero of the Ayodhya movement who rode the Ram wave to catapult the BJP to power in Uttar Pradesh,has floated his own outfit,the Jan Kranti Party. He had earlier floated another outfit after burning his bridges with the BJP then called the Rashtriya Kranti Party. In the last few years,then,Kalyan has moved from Rashtra to Jan (from the nation to the people). In between,there was his brief dalliance with the Samajwadi Party. After his arrangement with the SP,Kalyan is back to his Hindutva agenda,reiterating his resolve to build a grand Ram temple in Ayodhya. After his rather unceremonious exit from the SP grouping,he proudly said that it was he who combined Mandal and kamandal for the BJP in Uttar Pradesh. If,however,he had hoped that the prodigal son of the extended Hindutva family would be welcomed into the party after RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat and new BJP chief Nitin Gadkari had given signs of a back to the basics approach in the party,he was mistaken. Any proposal for Kalyans re-entry was stoutly contested by most of second-rung leadership,including outgoing party president Rajnath Singh and his rival in the party Arun Jaitley who handled UP as in-charge during Rajnaths stint. The closest that Kalyan,who broke new ground by forming the first BJP government in UP in 1991,came to the party was a statement by Gadkari,who said in one of his press conferences in Nagpur that the doors were open for those who had left the party,including K N Govindacharya,Kalyan Singh and Uma Bharti. After sensing the mood among the second-rung leaders on whose support his success would depend,Gadkari nuanced his stand,saying that there had been no proposal from those who had left the party to come back. Kalyan,thus,chose his birthday to launch a new party,anointing himself as the patron. He has made his son Rajveer Singh the party president,and during his first press conference,proudly announced that he would persuade his other family members to join the outfit. It was his family and one of his associates Kusum Rai who had scripted Kalyans downfall. It was his proximity to Rai,who was accused of acting as an extra-constitutional authority during Kalyans chief ministership,that alienated a large section of Kalyans supporters in the party. It was,again,his refusal to look beyond the interests of his son,Rajveer,which was at the root of straining his ties with the BJP,ultimately leading to his ouster. With a new outfit now,wedded to the cause of Hindutva and Ayodhya,Kalyans objective is two-fold. The Lodh leader will network with fellow caste leaders (Uma Bharti,who,like him,was said for a re-entry into the BJP) and wait for an opportune moment to strike some kind of arrangement with the BJP. The formula being proposed to Uma,for instance,has been to float an outfit and join the NDA,keeping in mind the equations in Madhya Pradesh being led by Shivraj Singh Chouhan,and objections,again,by a section of the party. Kalyans claim,then of helping build the party in every district of UP in the next three months,would be nothing but a tall claim. The Independent MP from Etah would probably be looking for an insurance package for his son and family,with the hope that his reiteration to the cause of Hindutva would enable him to do just that in future. In the process,however,Kalyan,who was among the tallest BJP leaders of the Mandal era,next only to Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L K Advani in the BJP hierarchy,has cut a pathetic figure.
