Bjp Looks Forward To Settle Scores With Vaghela

After 17-months of humiliating and frustrating exile, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is all set to bounce back to power in Gujarat and is looking forward to settling scores with rebel leader Shankarsinh Vaghela.

Failure of seat sharing talks between the Rashtriya Janata Party (RJP) and the Congress has proved to be a boon for the BJP. In almost all the 182 assembly seats and 26 Parliament seats, a triangular contest will benefit the saffron brigade because the vote banks of its two rivals consist of the sameKshatriyas, Harijans, Adi-vasis, Muslims and Scheduled Tribes.

The BJP, therefore, has two motives - to capture power in the state and to crush for good the political ambitions of rebel leader Vaghela. An additional advantage is that the BJP is the only cadre-based party in the state. The party high command has also sent back to the state party national general secretary Narendra Modi, a master strategist considered to be the brain behind the partys campaign strategy for the 1995 assembly elections in which the BJP bagged 121 seats thus winning an absolute majority.

 

Says Modi, The BJP will get an absolute majority and the Lok Sabha tally from the state will certainly shoot up from the present 16. Betrayal by Vaghela and corruption are the major issues being highlighted in the partys campaign. Differences between the hard-liners and the moderates are being kept under control as the party does not want a repeat of the Vaghela rebellion. Though the hard-liners are less in number but they are keeping a close watch on the movements of the moderates. Those toeing the softline like former Chief Minister Suresh Mehta and former president of the BJP state unit, Kashiram Rana were directed to tell the media that BJP national vice president Keshubhai Patel would be the Chief Minister after the election.

Keshubhai, a hard-liner close to Modi, is considered as the leader of the Patel community which is dominant in state, especially in Saurashtra. Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh cadres have also begun their fiery speeches and the door to door campaign.

The partys prime ministerial candidate Atal Behari Vajpayees tours in the state, which have drawn huge crowds, has also boosted the morale of the party workers. BJP national president L K Advanis decision to contest from the Gandhinagar seat has also energised the cadres.

The Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) president C D Patel says, Congress will fare better without the alliance as the tag of the RJP-Congress alliance would have been a stain on his partys image. We will get a majority in the state assembly. On the contrary, another senior leader of the party says, Congress may improve its tally as far as the assembly is concerned but getting a majority is out of question.

The Congress lacks a leader who is known throughout the state like Keshubhai Patel or even Vaghela. None of the partys state leaders are well known to the people outside their constituencies. Moreover, they have no issues to lure the voters except the Nehru-Gandhi familys sacrifices for the country and Sonia Gandhi, who has come thrice to Gujarat. The Congress cadres are still to recover from the hangover of the partys blunder in giving outside support to the RJP government. Says a demoralised worker, The tag of supporting the blatantly corrupt RJP government will take sometime to fade away and then we can think of power in the state.

The condition of the Congress could well be described by the fact that its candidates against Keshubhai Patel in the Visavadar (Rajkot district) assembly constituency and against sitting MP Vallabh Kathiria in the Rajkot Lok Sabha constituency have backed out of the fray.

The party is mainly banking on its strong hold in central and south Gujarat which has a sizable vote bank of backward castes, Dalits, Muslims and Adivasis.

Chief Minister Dilip Parikh, who is seeking a third term from the Dhanduka assembly constituency is himself in a tight spot. Against him, is 30-year old Bharat Pandya, contesting on a BJP ticket and being touted as the giant killer. Initially, Parikh was himself hesitant to contest elections but Vaghela, who himself has stayed away from the poll fray, forced him to contest the election.

Of the five main leaders of RJP, Narsinh Padiyar, Dilip Parikh, Vishnu Pandya, Chimman Shukla and Vaghela, only two (Padiyar and Parikh ) are contesting.

While Vaghela claims that the RJP would get about 105 Assembly seats, political observers in the state and also some of his own partymen feel that the RJP would barely touch the double figure mark in the assembly seats and there is no scope of its opening account in the Lok Sabha.

The emergence of the Janata Dal (JD) led by the septuagenarian leader Atma Ram Patel, who had split from the RJP with 15 legislators, could also play a significant role in North Gujarat. The JD is likely to chip into the votes of all the three parties and is expected to bag about six seats. JD candidate from Bharuch and a tribal leader Chhotubhai Vasva is virtually giving sleepless nights to all three parties, especially the Congress and RJP. The RJPs trick to lure tribal votes by appointing Madhusudan Mistry, a tribal activist, as the president of the party has failed to impress the voters.