Keshubhai may be replaced

By Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI, SEPT. 24. The Gujarat Chief Minister, Mr. Keshubhai Patel, may soon go the way of the former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Mr. Ram Prakash Gupta.

The defeat of the BJP in the recent byelections in the State has not yet got the full attention of the party leadership because it is busy with the fallout of the terrorist attacks in the U.S. and the war looming on the horizon.

Also, it may not want to open a front in Gujarat when its focus is on the coming Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. But sooner rather than later the party leadership will have to wake up to the loss of its support base in the State which became a casualty of the Kutch earthquake.

Rumblings of discontent have begun to be heard at the party office here, and perhaps one of the main reasons why Mr. Patel has not yet been replaced is the fact that he belongs to a powerful caste. Getting rid of a Patel and replacing him with a non-Patel could cost the party the support of this influential caste. And the BJP does not seem to have another Patel ready for the job.

A senior party leader today pointed out, almost in a jest, that Mr. Gupta had been called twice by the party high command here and given a piece of their mind. It was only when he was summoned here a third time that he was given his marching orders. Mr. Patel has been already admonished twice, next time he may not survive.

It is not just the recent Lok Sabha byelection in Sabarkantha and the Assembly byelection in Sabarmati that went wrong for the BJP. In the zila panchayat, taluka and municipal polls earlier, the BJP lost a lot of ground to its main rival in the State, the Congress. A high-level committee was set up to go into the reasons for the collapse of the party, and this too became a bone of contention with some accusing the Chief Minister of trying to fix the committee.

The harsh facts are staring the party in the face - in the Sabarmati Assembly segment, the BJP was ahead by 47,000 votes when the Union Home Minister, Mr. L.K. Advani, was the candidate for the Gandhinagar seat two years ago. The Assembly seat has been lost by 18,000 votes though the Government had pumped in money to revive the Madhavpura Bank which had collapsed after it played a no mean role in the Ketan Parekh scandal. In Sabarkantha, the margin of defeat for the BJP was not so stunning, but what must have been a bitter pill to swallow was the fact that the victor was a Shankarsinh Waghela man. (Mr. Waghela has merged his party with the Congress.)

The party has been asserting that the State Government had done considerable relief work after the earthquake in January this year and that the RSS had led the way. But clearly the voters of Gujarat have not been impressed, and they have shown their anger at the first opportunity.

It is almost certain that the party will now have to do some stock taking and begin a massive exercise in damage control if it is to try and save the only major State in which it has a clear majority. And that exercise can only begin with a change at the top.

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