The Hindu : BJP worried about Cong.'s 'wrong strategies'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jan 15, 2003

National

National

BJP worried about Cong.'s 'wrong strategies'

By Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI JAN. 14. These days the Bharatiya Janata Party seems to be more worried about the "wrong strategies" of the Congress than setting right its own affairs.

While the party president, Venkaiah Naidu, has been repeatedly emphasising that the Congress has "not learnt from its mistakes in Gujarat'', another senior party leader today expressed concern at the Congress moves to replace the Maharashtra Chief Minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh, and the "infighting" within the Himachal Pradesh unit of the Congress.

Wishing anonymity, a senior party leader today said that the Congress did not know where it stood ideologically. Changing the Chief Minister in Maharashtra would be a "make believe solution". He also pointed out that it had never helped just to make cosmetic changes at the top when the problems were more deep-rooted.

However, the BJP is perhaps forgetting that it changed the Chief Minister in Uttar Pradesh thrice in four-and-a-half years. Kalyan Singh gave way to Ram Prakash Gupta and he was asked to move for Rajnath Singh. In Delhi, just before the last Assembly elections, Sahib Singh Verma was replaced by Sushma Swaraj and, more recently, Keshubhai Patel had to make room for Narendra Modi in Gujarat a year before elections were due.

While BJP insiders admitted that in Himachal Pradesh, the internal differences between Shanta Kumar, a Cabinet Minister, and the Chief Minister, P.K. Dhumal, had just been papered over and that it remained to be seen whether unity of purpose had been achieved, many party leaders seem more worried about the "serious differences" between the Himachal Pradesh Congress chief, Vidya Stokes, and the former Chief Minister, Virbhadra Singh.

The BJP seems to be banking on the presence of a large number of rebel Congress candidates to sail through in Himachal Pradesh which goes to the polls on February 26.

In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP felt the Chief Minister, Digvijay Singh, was playing "diversionary politics'' by raising a controversy a day to keep at bay the issue of his own non-performance. "He is running away from the debate on governance under him for the last 10 years. Instead, he is projecting himself to be more patriotic (than us) by saying "jhanda uncha rahe hamara (let our flag fly high)", a senior party office-bearer pointed out. "That is a wrong strategy for the Congress".

After the Gujarat victory, the BJP is re-working its arithmetic. The 14 Congress-ruled States, after all, add up to about 27 per cent of the Lok Sabha and there is no possibility of the party increasing its strength anywhere except marginally, which would be offset by losses elsewhere. That is the calculation.

As for the BJP, where would its seats come in 2004 Lok Sabha elections? Well, the National Democratic Alliance was here to stay, so that meant the allies would help increase the BJP tally. A strong anti-incumbency wave in the Congress-ruled States would also help the BJP, party leaders said, forgetting, perhaps, that any anti-incumbency factor was more likely to work against the BJP which is leading the Government at the Centre.

Finally, another strong factor in the BJP's favour would be the unacceptability of the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, BJP leaders believe as they prepare to once again project their own mascot, Atal Behari Vajpayee, as Prime Minister in the 2004 elections.

The BJP's view is his 80 plus years by then will make no difference.

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