Bjp, Samata Alliance Under Strain

The Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP's) alliance with the Samata Party is under strain because of the latter's perception that the BJP has too often behaved like an overbearing big brother.

Though the strains have not reached a flashpoint, senior Samata leaders hold that unless something is done to delineate the contours of the understanding between the two parties, they might have to part ways.

Samata president George Fernandes asserted that his party's relationship with the BJP is not an alliance, but a mere seat adjustment for political reasons and added that there is a need to clarify the extent of this relationship.

 

We want to build the BJP-Samata relationship on a solid foundation rather than the existing floating relationsip, which is heavily dependent on ad hocism, he has said.

This was articulated at the party's two-day national executive meeting in Mumbai, which concluded on December 27. Party leaders demanded that the relationship should be given a formal shape, so that a formula for seat adjustments between the two at the national level could be evolved.

This demand was accompanied by the talk of carelessness and an overbearing attitude by the BJP units in Karnataka, Mumbai and Bihar.

Fernenades expressed unhappiness over the BJP ignoring his party's claim in the Gulbarga assembly byelection in Karnataka, which the BJP lost despite an understanding with Rama Krishna Hegde's Nav Nirmana Vedike.

Samata had fielded a strong candidate, who polled 42,000 votes against the 48, 000 votes polled by the Janata Dal's winning candidate and the 23,000 votes of the BJP candidate. The BJP gifted the Gulbarga assembly seat to the JD, just to keep Samata out of the assembly, Fernandes said.

The relationship between the two parties has witnessed a downswing in Bihar too, since BJP leaders at the lower levels have been trying to belittle Samata by saying that it would be allowed to contest not more than 50 of the 324 assembly seats, in case of a mid-term assembly poll in the state.

Fernandes described this as loose talk by the BJP leaders, which he said has created suspicion among Samata workers about the BJP's intentions.

Equal term is the minimum that we will settle for in any seat sharing arrangement with the BJP in Bihar, he said, adding that Samata should contest more assembly seats, going by the trends of the recent by-elections, in which it perfomed better than the BJP. The Samata won four of the six assembly seats it contested, whereas the BJP won only two of the four that it contested.

Another example of the BJP's attitude was demonstrated in Mumbai, when Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde and Fernandes reached an understanding on contesting the municipal polls together.

I knew that Munde's offer was an outcome of the BJP's fear that the Shiv Sena might prefer to contest the polls alone. When I pointed this out to Munde, he promised that, irrespective of the Shiv Sena's attitude, the BJP would stand by its commitment. However, immediately after reaching an undestanding with the Shiv Sena, the BJP changed tack and ignored Samata, he said.

The municipal elections will now be interesting to watch. The Samata, which has a significant trade union presence in Mumbai, has decided to contest 100 of the 221 municipal seats, Fernandes said.

Clearly, the effort will be to demonstrate to big brother that the little one can win something even alone.