Kanshi Rules Out Ties With Cong, May Ally With Bjp

After the Congress debacle in the Punjab polls, Kanshi Ram, the leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party, appears to have decided that the Congress is a spent force. Ram told a visitor yesterday that he did not now think he would form an alliance with the Cong-ress anywhere in the country.

The ruling Congress has been reduced to just 14 seats in the new Punjab Assembly. Ram seems bitter that, after the Congress spurned his terms for an alliance in Punjab, it failed to demonstrate any political muscle on its own.

He told his visitor that the Congress negotiators refused to leave even 30 of the 117 assembly seats to his party. However, senior Congress leaders dispute this, saying their instructions to Chief Mininster Rajinder Kaur Bhattal were to leave up to, but no more than, 30 seats.

Ram added that he had not made up his mind, but was open to the possibility of forming a link with the BJP instead.

Some senior BJP leaders are elated at the prospect of a BJP-BSP alliance - first in Uttar Pradesh and then at the national level. But they want to wait for the BSP to make the first move, so that they are in a better bargaining position. The BSP currently has an alliance with the Congress in UP, forged before the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections last September. The alliance did not yeild as good a result as Ram had hoped for in those elections. Together, the two parties won less seats than either the BJP or the Samajwadi Party.

The political sands in UP have already begun to shift. SP leader Mulayam Singh Yadav has been in touch with some senior Congress leaders about the possibility of a new alliance between their parties. That has so far been held up by stiff opposition from UP Congress President Jitendra Prasada. Congress leaders close to party President Sitaram Kesari say an alliance with Yadav could help them reclaim the votes of Muslims across the country. They think the BSP has Dalit support in only a few states, such as UP, Punjab and Madhya Pradesh.

BJP leaders, on the other hand, calculate that an alliance with the BSP could give them the vital edge to come to power at the Centre. BJP leaders now figure that they need more alliances like the ones they already have with the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra and the Samata Party in Bihar to achieve that goal.

Party vice-president Sunder Singh Bhandari yesterday said the success of the BJP-Akali alliance would boost the BJPs image among other regional parties, which he described as the BJPs potential allies. I dont think these parties have fundamental ideological differences with the BJP, he asserted.

However, Bhandari said that the BJP would like to first hammer out a common minimum programme on the pattern of the SAD-BJP alliance in Punjab and then enter into any electoral understanding with the BSP. A post-election alliance sounds opportunistic, he said.Another BJP office-bearer added the caveat that the BJP would only be willing to form a coalition government with the BSP in UP. Mayawati could become the Chief Minister but the BJP would have a major say in the government, he said, adding that a common minimum programme would need to be the basis. Former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee holds this view, he pointed out, and claimed that leaders like LK Advani and Kalyan Singh who have reservations about an alliance with the BSP, have also agreed to this.