There was this media wit -- someone called him a twit, but that's besides the point -- whom I met for dinner last week. He made an interesting observation. "A crisis in Delhi's political circles is like an elephant getting pregnant," he told me over a drink. "Everything happens in such high places." I would say that is not wide of the mark. Especially when it concerns pumped-up egos in the Samata Party, a partner in the ruling National Democratic Alliance. First there is George Fernandes, the firebrand union leader of yore. He now plays 'senior statesman' in the coalition at the Centre. Then there is Nitish Kumar, the undisputed leader of the Kurmis. I am told he relishes sparring with the leading lights of his own party. And then there is Raghunath Jha, the heavyset from Bihar's Gopalganj. If I recollect, he had thumbed his nose as a minister in Laloo Prasad Yadav's RJD government, said hello to NDA bigwigs, and landed up as Nitish Kumar's bosom buddy in the Samata, becoming its chief in Bihar. United, they stand pretty tall. Divided, they begin to crumble like cookies. Nitish Kumar wants to hold complete sway in the affairs of Bihar's Samata Party and retain his central agriculture portfolio. That part's okay. The catch is that he also wants Jha to quit as the Bihar party chief. To which Jha replies enthusiastically: Nothing doing! Don't try to push me around or I will walk out with five MPs! True to the general trend, the friends-turned-foes resort to considerable sabre-rattling. Both warn the defence minister that he better take their respective point of view -- or else... But hey, hang on. Cynics whisper that the entire "drama" has been scripted by Boy George to up his ante as the party's 'resident Bismarck'. Initially, Boy George had given the impression that he was with Jha. He went along fine when Nitish Kumar announced his resignation because he was being "blackmailed " by the rival faction. "When Georgesahib forwarded Nitish Kumar's resignation to the prime minister, we thought he had accepted our point of view. "But the prime minister rejected Nitish's resignation and subsequent developments convinced us that Georgesahib had other things in mind. "The entire drama was to enable Jaya Jaitley to become our party chief (she has, from its working president) by playing off Nitish with Raghunathji," averred Shankar Acharya, Samata Party regional leader in Jharkhand. Boy George's dealings with the two party factions buttress this impression, I should say. Any number of Samata activists are willing to vouchsafe that but for Nitish Kumar, Boy George would not have prospered in the Kurmis's backyard, Bihar's Nalanda parliamentary constituency. Hadn't, they asked me, Nitish Kumar handpicked Nalanda for him where he has been winning comfortably despite Laloo's resurgent RJD, which is formidable by any standard? They pointed out that Nitish Kumar has extended consistent support to Boy George in most matters barring the Ajay Jadeja incident, wherein the union agriculture minister took umbrage at Jaya Jaitley's spirited defence of the cricketer. However, Boy George took advantage on Nitish Kumar's resignation and forwarded it to the prime minister. He had kept both Nitish Kumar and Jha on tenterhooks, not indicating what he intended to do with the resignation. Only after he completed the 'finishing touches' to facilitate his protégé Jaitley's election as party chief in the Mysore convention did he forward it to PM Vajpayee, who promptly rejected it. Boy George's balancing act suggests that he was trying to keep both Nitish Kumar and Jha happy periodically to serve his own ends. "Georgesahib has a track record of making senior party leaders slug it out and profiting," said Ram Sewak Sinha, a Jha acolyte. He referred to the Janata Party regime in the late 1970s when he made hay while his colleagues fought it out in a mutually destructive bout. Boy George adventures, however, may land him in trouble. For one, he cannot ignore that he owes his political constituency in Nalanda to Nitish Kumar. On the other hand, the Samata has reasonable clout in the NDA with 11 MPs. But if a 'wrongly-rubbed' Jha decides that Boy George has been partial to Nitish Kumar, the MP from Gopalganj could well walk out with five party colleagues, triggering a subsequent collapse for Samata. Fernandes is aware that with the remaining five MPs, Vajpayee may well apply the 'quota' system in the distribution of ministerial portfolios. The prime minister, thus, could say that five Samata MPs cannot hold on to three central ministries -- besides Boy George and Nitish Kumar, party colleague Digvijay Singh is minister of state for railways. In that case, George the Bismarck will have to draw on his statesmanship heavily to save the day. Special Correspondent Tara Shankar Sahay is partial about covering Bihar and Bihari politicians. Tell us what you think of this diary
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