CURRENT ISSUE SEPTEMBER 25, 2006

GROPING IN THE DARK

A directionless party, the BJP is Uttar Pradesh is witnessing a mass exodus of partymen in recent times. India Today's Subhash Mishra discusses the implications.

Is the BJP's survival in Uttar Pradesh at stake? With 15 of its MLAs having crossed over to rival political parties, mainly the ruling Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, in the last two years and many more still hobnobbing with others for a flight to safer sanctuaries, the BJP leadership is helpless in preventing the unabated exodus of senior leaders of the party .

Those who quit the BJP last week included the high-profile bureaucrat-turned politician Mahendra Singh Yadav, husband of senior IAS officer and ex-chief secretary of the state Neera Yadav, to join the Samajwadi Party in the presence of Shivpal Singh Yadav, senior minister and younger brother of the chief minister, Mulayam Singh Yadav ,the BJP leadership in the state was shell-shocked ,though it pretended to have been prepared for this loss! "In fact, two of the three MLAs had already left the BJP--Mahendra Singh Yadav had not been attending party programmes and meetings for the last two years and Amarjit Singh Jansewak had formally joined the BSP", reacted party state president Kesharinath Tripathi, who has been trying his best to enthuse life into the BJP, but he has his own limitations.

The unabated exodus from the BJP towards the SP and the BSP should be a cause of concern for the national leadership of the party, not only because those who left the party last week were blue eyed boys of national president Rajnath Singh but also because they are in the good books of party veteran leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Both Vajpayee and Rajnath Singh are from Uttar Pradesh and their reluctance in checking the rot in the organisation is shameful on their part.The biggest handicap of the BJP, at least in Uttar Pradesh, is that it has lost its credibility as a whole and the leadership and the organisation is groping in the dark for direction.

The party leadership is iistelf responsible for the state of affairs considering the way it wilfully ignored to stem the rot that began to set in in 2002 when the party strength nosedived to 86 from 176 in the assembly. The BJP formed an alliiance with the BSP to form the government under the leadership of Mayawati in May 2002.
The BJP leadership, particularly those who occupied the offices of ministers in the Mayawati government, ignored the expectations of the cadres of the party. This resulted in resentment and at times open defiance against ministers like Lalji Tandon but workers remained ignored throughout the BJP-BSP government. When Mayawati was dislodged and replaced by Mulayam Singh Yadav, the party leadership again chose to hand over command to the same people who had no recognition beyond their constituency.

Whenever Mulayam leader of the Assembly threatened Tandon and his company that he would expose their "corrupt" deeds, the BJP Legislature Party succumbed under pressure. This has created doubts in the minds of BJP workers who sensed that the BJP is no more an Opposition party and is just a lapdog of Mulayam. The result: an exodus of the workers which is continuing. But the BJP must act at least now. Or it may prove too late.

Index