Letter from Delhi: Lotus-eaters of the BJP loosen grip on party

Could a drubbing in student elections portend bad times ahead?

The humiliating defeat of the party's student wing, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, in the recent Delhi University Students' Union elections has failed to wake up the lotus-eaters of the Sangh parivar.

Not long ago, the BJP was the first to tom-tom that a good showing in the DUSU elections was a pretty good indicator of the public mood in the national capital.

Now, it is squirming with the ABVP candidates faring so badly that even Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chauthala's candidates performed better than all of them.

Two days before the polling for the DUSU poll, a senior Delhi BJP leader alerted the BJP Chief, Venkaiah Naidu, and, the Delhi BJP Chief, Madanlal Khurana, about the ill-wind blowing the ABVP way and called for some last-minute damage control.

The reaction of senior leaders present at the meeting at the party headquarters at 11 Ashoka Road was a collective shrug. They could not be bothered with such minor things as DUSU elections. Sycophancy, factionalism, corruption even at the higher echelons of the party had now seeped deep into the BJP culture. So much so that it is now indistinguishable from the Congress Party.

More trouble for the BJP. The news from Rajasthan, set to go to the polls later this year, is not good for the saffron party. Even though the former Gwalior princess, Vasundhara Raje, has been braving heat and grime of the desert state - and has acquired a lovely tan in the process - the party unit led by her continues to be faction-ridden.

She herself is a poor judge of men and matters, leaving vital organisational matters to be decided by the Vice-President's son-in-law who is a key functionary in the State BJP or better still to be decided for her by Bhairon Singh Shekhawat himself.

The old guard of the RSS-Jana Sangh in the Rajasthan BJP remains irreconciled to Raje's chief ministerial claims.

Small wonder then that the Congress Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot is unfazed by the coming Assembly elections. It wasn't like that before. Gehlot was a sure loser about the time Raje was drafted to lead the Rajasthan BJP.

Two things happened to spoil the BJP party. One, they made Raje their chief ministerial candidate even though ordinary Rajasthanis were not impressed by her credentials as a local, and two, the good monsoon has put the smiles back on the faces of the peasantry, thus taking the sting out of the anti-incumbency factor. But, more importantly, the failure of Raje to show she is her own boss, and not a puppet in the hands of Shekhwat or Pramod Mahajan, has diluted her image.

Add to this the shrill campaign by Gehlot that "some people from Delhi and Mumbai are setting the agenda for Raje and we cannot allow this to go unquestioned."

The latter is a reference to Mahajan, who has virtually taken over the management of Raje's campaign.

Did Gingee Ramachandran return to the ministry by blackmailing his party boss Vaiko and Vajpayee.

Ramachandran belongs to the four-member Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagham group in the Lok Sabha. Their leader and MP, Vaiko, has been in a Tamil Nadu prison under Prevention of Terrorism Act (POT) for more than a year for allegedly supporting the cause of the Sri Lankan Tamils.

Before his arrest, Vaiko was one of the more vociferous supporters of Vajpayee in and outside Parliament but the Prime Minister has done precious little to secure his release from Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithia's prison.

After Ramachandran found himself forced out of the ministry following the arrest of his personal assistant in a bribery case, he has been sending dire messages to Vaiko that he would leave the MDMK with a fellow MP unless he was re-inducted into the Government.

This when there was a clear evidence that his P.A. was taking money for postings and transfer of customs officers when he (Ramachandran) was the Minister of State in charge of Revenue in the Finance Ministry.