BJP dilemma over Uma Bharati | N.D.Sharma

Published on 16-08-2008 In General

Viewed 1416 times

BJP dilemma over Uma Bharati

Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan was undergoing treatment for dehydration in a private hospital (apparently he has little faith in the government-run hospitals) when the news of Uma Bharati's "CD fiasco" reached him. It turned out to be the most efficacious remedy for his malaise than the intravenous fluids dribbled into his system by the doctors. Soon he was back at his residence, receiving and re-receiving from his trusted lieutenants the detailed accounts of what Uma Bharati had told the Delhi media about the "cash for votes" having been scripted and enacted by the BJP leaders themselves and how her "BJP's-own-conspiracy" theory went phut within the hour.

Now the BJP's doors would be permanently closed for Uma Bharati, his buddies told him. That must have been the sweetest sentence he had heard in a long time. Once Uma Bharati's most fawning foot soldier, Chauhan had been dreading Uma's name ever since he became chief minister in November 2005. The Sadhvi has since been using the most unrestrained language against him, not infrequently calling him "bacha chor" (child-lifter). She has felt, and claimed publicly, that the people of the State had given the mandate to her to form the government in 2003 and that this government has been like her own child and now this "bacha chor" has snatched it. So terrified had Chauhan been of Uma Bharati that he would miss an appointment whenever there was the possibility of his crossing the path with her. He was said to be suffering from nightmares with the constant talk of Uma Bharati's return to the BJP in the past few months because she would not return to the BJP without a compromise on Chauhan's position.

The euphoria created by Uma's CD blunder, however, did not last long. Soon, the anxiety started nagging him. Then it gave way to despair. Why didn't the BJP leadership denounce Uma Bharati in the strongest terms to send the message across that the party would never have anything to do with such perfidious people? Chauhan, along with his close friend and counsellor Narendra Tomar (State BJP president) monitored the press conferences held by M.Venkaiah Naidu in Bhopal and Arun Jailtley in Delhi. Nothing about Uma Bharati and her knavery! Nor has any other senior party leader said anything about Uma Bharati's ignominious act of trying to project the BJP leaders as a bunch of petty conspirators!

The bottled up reaction of the BJP leaders to Uma Bharati's "most reprehensible" act has once again revived the rumours that the party high command may be trying to find some formula to use the Sadhvi's talents in the forthcoming elections. The party obviously needs that badly. With Atal Behari Vajpayee no more in a position to undertake campaigning, the party is woefully short of crowd pullers. With her garb of a Sadhvi, her fluency in reciting quotations from the scriptures and her oratorical skill, she instantly produces a hypnotic effect upon the masses, particularly in the villages.

It is true that she has a mercurial nature, occasionally displaying the symptoms of juvenile delinquency. But she also knows how to convert that deficiency into an asset. When she sees that she has committed a serious blunder, she would say with an innocent countenance that her behaviour sometimes appears wayward but she will now be careful about what she says or does. The people, as can be expected, applaud her "forthrightness".

Uma Bharati can be a great help to the BJP in the election campaign, thus goes the thinking, but she is capable of inflicting much greater damage on the party if she campaigns against it. The Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh are due in November. There is much that can be said against the performance of the Shivraj Singh Chauhan government. When Uma Bharati speaks against Chauhan or his government, she does not stop at the dry facts but adds the flavour of her own style which goes pretty well with the majority of the people. She had not been able to win the several by-elections held in the State after her ouster from the BJP, but her candidates had almost everywhere received substantial number of votes. If she puts forward candidates in all, or most, of the constituencies in the November elections, she is very likely to jeopardise the chances of the BJP's return to power, whether she herself gets sufficient number of MLAs to form the government or not.

Her "CD fiasco" can be treated as one of her aberrations, if the BJP leadership can find a way to re-establish a dialogue with her. Hasn't she brought greater embarrassments to the BJP leaders in the past when she had used the most derogatory language against Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani, not to speak of others like M.Venkaiah Naidu and the late Pramod Mahajan? Naidu is not likely to ever forget Uma's reference to his wife in a public meeting in Bhopal in a language one never uses in public.

The BJP leaders are, it would thus appear, faced with a quandary of gigantic magnitude. The Sadhvi is, if anything, making their task only more difficult by nettling them even as some signs of thaw become visible. The latest is the CD incident through which she tried to portray the BJP leaders, Arun Jaitley included, as villains who had hatched a conspiracy to defame the Congress and Samajwadi Party leaders. She did not drop back after it was shown that the CD released by her at her Delhi press conference was shot after the trust vote had taken place in the Lok Sabha on June 22. She reportedly told a Bhopal newspaper from Jammu (where she had proceeded from Delhi) that she was not concerned with the date of the shoot of the CD. All that she wanted to show was that a person was entering certain (BJP) leader's house with a bag and then coming out empty handed, she was quoted by the newspaper as having said. It is this disdain of the Sadhvi that seems to be worrying the BJP leaders on the eve of the elections.

1 Comments

Blog

Print