The Hindu : Infighting led to defeat in elections, says Vajpayee

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Mar 03, 2003

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Infighting led to defeat in elections, says Vajpayee

By Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI MARCH 2. The stunning defeat of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Himachal Pradesh has signalled the start of the blame game in the party, and it seems that the former Himachal Chief Minister and now Cabinet Minister, Shanta Kumar, has become the scapegoat.

Gujarat, the BJP is realising, was not the start of the revival of the party's electoral fortunes, but may have been a gift of the riots. Apparently, it admitted this today during a high-level meeting at the party office attended by the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, the party president, Venkaiah Naidu, the Law Minister, Arun Jaitley, and central party office-bearers, including the newly-inducted general secretary, Pramod Mahajan.

It was Mr. Advani who is reported to have remarked that but for Godhra and the subsequent gory events in Gujarat, the party could not have overcome the anti-incumbency factor to the extent of a two-thirds majority.

Since the BJP's Gujarat electoral victory was being attributed to the Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, this remark was seen as implying that even Mr. Modi could not have pulled it off if it had not been for the help he got from the Gujarat riots.

The meeting noted that the party could find no solace in the Himachal results, nor could it see any sign of "revival" of its fortunes in Uttar Pradesh where two by-elections were lost, but some comfort was available in the gains made in Nagaland and Meghalaya.

Mr. Vajpayee himself was reported to have blamed organisational weakness in the party and infighting in the State unit as the two most important factors that prevented it from overcoming a strong anti-incumbency wave.

Although Mr. Advani also agreed that the organisation was not in the best of health, Mr. Vajpayee's reference was being interpreted as finger-pointing at the party team led by Mr. Naidu under the overall direction of Mr. Advani.

That Mr. Kumar will take the major share in the blame game was evident when Mr. Vajpayee took strong exception to his reported remarks yesterday that the results were the result of poor performance by the Dhumal Government and the people's anger that spilt out on voting day.

He is reported to have said that Mr. Kumar would be asked for an explanation, adding that the wrong message from the "infighting" between Mr. Kumar and Mr. Dhumal (who has resigned following the defeat) had gone down to the grassroots. "We should fight unitedly," Mr. Vajpayee is reported to have told the office-bearers.

Mr. Advani in fact handed out a compliment to Mr. Dhumal saying his performance had been good, emphasising that overcoming anti-incumbency was possible only through a strong organisation.

He blamed the defeat in Delhi elections nearly five years ago also on the infighting among the party's state leaders, although at that time it had become clear that a string of failures on the performance front — sky-rocketing vegetable prices, power situation at its worst in decades, the mustard oil adulteration scandal, a dengue outbreak — had led to the BJP's rout.

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