The Hindu : BJP's `balancing act' in U.P. complete?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, May 26, 2003

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BJP's `balancing act' in U.P. complete?

By Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI MAY 25. For four years now the Bharatiya Janata Party has tried virtually every political trick to arrest its decline in Uttar Pradesh which set in after the 1999 Lok Sabha elections and the subsequent ouster of the former Chief Minister, Kalyan Singh. And now it plans to use the caste card, the Ayodhya card, the Vajpayee Government's achievements card and whatever else comes into its hands.

With the re-induction of Rajnath Singh into the Union Cabinet the party perhaps hopes to kill two birds with one stone. The inclusion of a `thakur' from Uttar Pradesh into the Cabinet could help boost the flagging upper caste support for the party, and his removal from the post of general secretary, which he held till yesterday, would mean one less thorn in the party's stormy relations with its State coalition partner, the Bahujan Samaj Party. It is an accepted fact that Mr. Singh was never happy with the party decision to go along with Mayawati of the BSP.

The party now has a Uttar Pradesh `Brahmin' as Prime Minister, a `thakur' from the State in the Cabinet and Vinay Katiyar, a backward caste leader, as its State president. As for the `Dalits' the BJP has always claimed that it has given the State a Dalit Chief Minister, Ms. Mayawati, by helping the BSP form the Government. That completes the balancing of the caste factor.

On Saturday, Mr. Katiyar launched a 25-day `yatra' of the State, which proposes to cover every district traversing 250 km a day on an average. And even though the BJP's central leadership has repeatedly maintained that Ayodhya will not be used as an election issue, Mr. Katiyar, closely associated with the demolition of the Babri Masjid, is not shy of accepting that it will certainly be one of the major issues of his `yatra'.

"The issue is in the court, but its order excavations have taken place," he said and went on to claim that "all kinds of archaeological proofs have been found" to establish that there was an ancient temple at the site. "I would now like to appeal to the Muslim brethren that they should make an effort to settle the Ayodhya dispute amicably... it would be a true gesture of brotherhood."

It would seem that the BJP wants to have its cake and eat it too — it claims it does not want to raise the Ayodhya issue as it is bound to the National Democratic Alliance agenda, and yet its State level leaders openly admit that they do and will raise the issue.

The party's plan for the Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh certainly includes Ayodhya, though most of the work on that may be left to its sibling, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.

Besides Ayodhya, Mr. Katiyar will also focus on familiarising the people with the achievements of the Vajpayee Government.

During the yatra, which began at Garhmukhteshwar and is expected to end at Varanasi, Mr. Katiyar plans to tell the people about the nuclear bomb, the ushering in of the telecommunications revolution, the national highway plan, Central help during the drought last year and so on.

However, he is already facing problems as the BJP-led Government at the Centre and its coalition Government in the State have together not been able to get the sugar cane growers the dues owed to them by sugar mills in the State.

And the new crop of sugarcane rots in the fields with mill owners not ready to lift it.

The result: cane prices have crashed and the BJP's hopes for a political revival could be dashed.

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