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BJP to mount 'operation UP' after election results are known

R R Nair in New Delhi

The Bharatiya Janata Party is confident that Kalyan Singh will win Thursday's floor test in the Uttar Pradesh assembly, with the support of the prodigal Naresh Agrawal's Loktantrik Congress Party.

The BJP leaders even speak of the majority of the Kalyan Singh government going up from what it was before Saturday's dismissal and the swearing-in of Jagdambika Pal.

The BJP is fully aware of the "image-damage" caused by the ' aya Ram gaya Ram' brand of politics the party is playing in UP.

So the BJP think-tank feels there should be a logical conclusion to the sordid drama in UP: "Election is a possibility since the UP drama has to come to an end. But it is too early to comment on that because it all will dependent on the outcome of the parliamentary election."

The BJP does not want to take any more chances with Governor Romesh Bhandari. Moreover, it would be all the more easy to call the shots once the party is firmly saddled on power at the Centre.

"Mid-term elections to the UP assembly is not the only way out, there are other possibilities also. We could not do anything in Gujarat or UP because we were not in power at the Centre. Once we have the central government we can even get the Loktantrik members to merge with BJP," said a high-ranking BJP leader.

The idea is to discipline the Loktantrik members and convert them into a faithful lot of the Sangh Parivar. And then to reduce the size of the jumbo state cabinet, failing which alone they feel that the option of a mid-term poll should be exercised.

Meanwhile, Janata Dal leader and Union Human Resources Minister S R Bommai held a press conference, where he said the Supreme Court's directive for a secret ballot to choose the leader in the UP House goes against convention of 50 years vintage.

The Supreme Court has ordered that the House should vote for the either of the two: Kalyan Singh or Jagdambika Pal, and that too in a single ballot box kept near the speaker's chair.

Normally, a floor test is conducted through a lobby division in which the treasury benches would go to their lobby and the Opposition would go to theirs and then cast votes in separate ballot boxes.

As this is an election of the chief minister by the House, Bommai has held that the process runs contrary to convention because it is normally the legislature party which elects its leader.

And if the governor feels a legislature party leader has the majority in the House he is invited to form the government.

"A vote of confidence should be open, not secret. It should be visible to all. That is the convention of the last 50 years," Bommai said.

Bommai says though his case (S R Bommai versus the Government of India) is cited as the law of the land for determining the norms of a floor test, there is also a clause in the verdict which says that in exceptional cases the governor can do without a floor test and invite a legislature party leader if the governor feels the incumbent chief minister has lost the majority and that the new claim is tenable.

But if a floor test is not done then it is obligatory for the governor to give in writing the reason for it. Bommai asserts that Bhandari has done so and that the governor wanted to avoid a situation similar to what had happened in October when Kalyan Singh won the confidence vote amidst pandemonium in the House. It was then even alleged that outsiders had voted instead of MLAs for Kalyan Singh.

But the BJP is not buying the argument. "Bhandari had given Jagdambika Pal time to prove his majority. For that matter Pal even got it. So it could have been quite possible that he was preparing the pitch for outsiders to vote for Pal," says a BJP leader.

Bommai has also expressed his scepticism about the way the UP speaker would behave: "The speaker has been dilly dallying over the expulsion of 12 defecting BSP MLAs for nearly five months now to allow them to prop up the Kalyan Singh government. Can a leopard shed its spots overnight? I must warn him that the whole country is watching."

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