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Divide and Rule
The recent
splits in the BSP and the JD(U) in Bihar are yet another set of pointers
to the poaching prowess of Laloo Prasad Yadav. India Today's Farzand Ahmed
looks at the jungle rules that he has played by for over a decade.
RJD
chief Laloo Prasad Yadav believes in playing by the rules of
the jungle. As far as he is concerned, only "the lion" can hold
sway over the jungle raj that he has been accused of turning Bihar into.
So when four of the 12 MLAs of the Janata Dal (United) walked out of the
party to form their own outfit, the Janata Dal (Jayaprakash Narayan),
last week, the issue was not about their disillusionment or new hopes
but rather about Laloo's poaching prowess, however indirect it may have
been.
For Laloo, who has mastered the art and craft of jungle politics,
the timing of the JD(U) split couldn't have been better. The JD
(U), headed by Union Food and Consumer Affairs Minister Sharad
Yadav, suffered the humiliating split in the midst of the assembly
session. It was as embarrassing and as audacious as the earlier
divide in state unit of the Bahujan Samaj Party, once again
engineered by Laloo. "He has to pay a price for this," swore
BSP
supremo and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati at a press
conference in Patna. Clearly, she had been outsmarted by the
former Bihar chief minister who had effortlessly weaned away
four BSP MLAs from under her nose by offering them berths in Rabri Devi's
jumbo-sized ministry. The move had sparked off a chain reaction within
the BSP with several party workers and
office-bearers too crossing over. An anguished Mayawati had to
rush to the state capital to take charge of the party affairs.
Luckily for Laloo, the split in the BSP and JD (U) coincided with
the threat of the 11-MLA Congress to end the alliance with the RJD and
stand on its own. The Congress had no choice but to change its mind.
The split-and-rule policy has held Laloo in good stead for over a
decade now. When he was heading a minority government in 1990 and dared
to halt the march of L.K. Advani's Ram rath towards Ayodhya in October
and arrested him, the BJP, which was supporting his government from outside,
quickly withdrew its support. Laloo, the rustic genius, managed to win
over 13 of the 39 MLAs in the BJP who under former state party chief Inder
Singh Namdhari—now Speaker of Jharkhand—formed their own outfit
called Sampoorna Kranti Dal to support Laloo.
There has been no looking back since. In 1993, just before the
biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha, Laloo split the 19-member
JMM that was making noises over the creation of Jharkhand. He won over
six of the JMM MLAs headed by Krishna Mardi and ensured the defeat of
JMM nominee Subodh Kant Sahay.
Krishna formed his own group, the JMM (Marndi), to support the
Laloo government. Shibu Soren headed another group. Laloo in turn got
a resolution passed by the Assembly in support of the creation of Jharkhand.
That he got the resolution scrapped later is another story. In a bid to
keep the JMM happy earlier, Laloo had allowed its loudmouth leader Suraj
Mandal operate in south Bihar as "super-CM".
On the eve of the 1995 assembly polls, a group of senior Janata
Dal leaders, headed by Nitish Kumar, walked out of the party and
formed the Samata Party with a vow to end Laloo's jungle raj
but Laloo got a massive mandate.
However, he split the CPI (ML)-Liberation with three of the
seven MLAs walking into Laloo's arms. The CPI (ML) had at that time launched
a campaign over land reforms and against Laloo's
misrule.
There was again a split in the Janata Dal, then headed by Laloo.
Sharad Yadav, its working president, rebelled on the eve of
Laloo's surrender before the court in 1997 in connection with the
fodder scam. It was then that Laloo formed the RJD and foisted his wife
Rabri Devi as chief minister. In 1999, Laloo split even the
Communist Party of India.
This time too, the splits in the BSP and the JD(U) have worked
perfectly well to his advantage. The split in the JD (U), however,
has also coincided with its efforts with the Samata Party to form
a group within the NDA. The politics behind this was to get the
BJP ousted from the status of the main opposition in the Assembly. Together,
the JD(U) and the Samata Party would have the strength of 42 MLAs against
the BJP's 35.
Many thought that split in the JD (U) was double-edged: it
destroyed the unity efforts among the centrist parties and
helped Leader of the Opposition Sushil Kumar Modi to maintain his
position. Modi has often been suspected of supporting Laloo, as he never
moved a no-confidence motion again the Rabri Government. Now he is eyeing
the 30-MLA Samata Party which has been restless over the big brother attitude
of the BJP which heads the NDA. And a split in the party could happen
any day. The lion is roaring.
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