HEAVYWEIGHT: Shekhawat has the rare ability to detach the political from the personal

The caller was a close friend, Karpoor Chand Kulish, founder of Rajasthan Patrika, the state's largest newspaper. "So when are you going to Delhi?'' "Tomorrow,'' replied Bhairon Singh Shekhawat. "Where will you be staying? At Rajasthan House?'' asked Kulish, presuming that, as in the past, the former chief minister and current leader of the Opposition in the state Assembly would be staying at the state guest house in the capital. "It could be anywhere, maybe Advani's or Vajpayee's place." Then it was Shekhawat's turn to ask, "Tell me, where does the vice-president of India stay?''

The brief exchange between the two good friends occurred last Monday. Shekhawat was by then aware that he was the NDA nominee for the vice-president's post though it is quite possible that he was not exactly aware of the location of the vice-president's house. In about three weeks, Shekhawat will become the occupant of 6 Maulana Azad Road, the official residence of India's vice-president. Congressman Sushil Kumar Shinde's nomination as the joint Opposition candidate will at best offer a token fight considering that the NDA has a comfortable majority in the two houses of Parliament which constitute the electoral college for the vice-presidential election.

Shekhawat's impending elevation as vice-president coincides with a half century that he has spent in public life. If despite the long innings, he remained clueless about some of the less important landmarks in Lutyens' Delhi, it is because much of it was spent in his native Rajasthan. Born in 1923 in Kachriawas village in Sikar district, Shekhawat went to a local school. Later he joined the police and even won fame for arresting dreaded dacoits.

In 1952, the Jan Sangh offered his elder brother Bishan Singh, an RSS worker, a ticket for the Data Ramgarh constituency. Being a government servant, Bishan declined to join the fray. Shekhawat took it up instead for his first taste of electoral politics.

Since then he has contested 11 times for a seat in the Assembly, winning all barring one and has the distinction of being the longest-serving legislator from the Jan Sangh stable. His lone foray into national politics in the Emergency years saw him spending more time in jail than in the Rajya Sabha to which he was elected from Madhya Pradesh. Says Shekhawat: "If it weren't for democracy I would never have made it anywhere. I would have been ploughing fields in my village."

From 1977, when he became the state chief minister for the first time, to 1998, when he handed over power to the Congress party's Ashok Gehlot, it was a political roller-coaster ride. His was among the many governments that Indira Gandhi dismissed after the Congress returned to power at the Centre in 1980. Though his party had to wait for another decade to regain power, Shekhawat himself won every election and sat in the Opposition . His second stint as chief minister, like his first, remained incomplete, the BJP government being dismissed in December 1992 following the demolition of the Babri Masjid. But in less than a year, he was back in power and remained in office until 1998, becoming the only BJP chief minister to complete a full term.

Surprisingly, for a man who has stuck to one party and ideology, his friendships have cut across party lines. Chandra Shekhar and Shekhawat follow divergent political paths, but as prime minister, Shekhar depended on his good friend from Rajasthan to hold crucial negotiations on Ayodhya. Even Laloo Prasad Yadav believed he was a man to befriend. When he wanted to admit two daughters to Mayo Girls School, he sent them to Shekhawat. Despite a personal disinclination to pull strings, Shekhawat obliged. It is this rare ability to keep politics away from the personal that has fuelled rumours that on August 12 Shekhawat may end up bagging more votes than current parliamentary arithmetics suggest.

Shekhawat can be quite blunt. And never so much as when dealing with people in his own party. While accompanying party colleague Jaswant Singh to Chittorgarh during his Lok Sabha election campaign in 1998, Shekhawat told Jaswant, "Stop sporting a frozen face like Sonia Gandhi and start smiling. Wave to the voters." Jaswant did neither and lost. Ironically for a life-long Jan Sanghi, if ever Shekhawat shared an uneasy relationship with anyone, it was the RSS. It had a lot to do with his belief that electoral politics needed a mass strategy, a view in conflict with the RSS credo of loyalty-first. This perhaps was the reason why wherever he went, the slogan that greeted him remained the same: "Rajasthan ka ek hi singh, Bhairon Singh, Bhairon Singh (The only lion in Rajasthan is Bhairon Singh)."

Last month, when Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee first sounded out his old friend about the shift to Delhi, Shekhawat is said to have responded: "Do you want to elevate me or do you want me out of Rajasthan?" He had a point. Shekhawat wasn't just another leader. He was the great banyan tree that dwarfed all else in Rajasthan.