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The Rediff Column/V C Bhaskaran

Whipping boy takes the whip in his saffron hands

With the Uttar Pradesh coup and broad hints that it might upstage the United Front in New Delhi and the Rashtriya Janata Party in Gujarat, the Bharatiya Janata Party has sent its rivals scurrying for cover.

No one -- not even the saffron brigade -- would have ever imagined that the whipping boy could make the ruling UF look like pygmies. The whipping boy has taken the whip in his hands. Pity to see the rest shivering in mortal fear.

Look at the hurry in which a chorus was raised for plugging the ''loopholes'' in the anti-defection law.

The initial panic reaction of all the non-BJP parties was that an ordinance should be promulgated to ban defections, hopefully with retrospective effect!

But with the Inder Kumar Gujral government suffering a major blow when President K R Narayanan asked the Centre to reconsider its decision on dismissing the Kalyan Singh government in Uttar Pradesh, the high priests of political morality thought it prudent to abandon such a suicidal path. They realised that Narayanan could not be expected to sign on the dotted line. That the winter session of Parliament began on November 19.

Soon there were a myriad of suggestions. While Janata Dal president Sharad Yadav said the Act should be scrapped, the Congress and the Left parties felt the law had to be tightened -- a euphemism for making defections much more expensive?

Some said defectors should be disqualified instantly. Others felt that only breakaway groups enjoying the support of 50 per cent of the legislators -- as against the present one-third -- should be accorded recognition.

Though Prime Minister Gujral made the ''right'' noises regarding the anti-defection law, he chose to look the other way when his UF colleagues and their ringmaster Sitaram Kesri spat fire on the BJP and racked their brains for a method to rein in the party.

With the UF steering committee agreeing at its November 5 meeting on the need for checking ''unprincipled'' floor-crossing, the BJP could surely take the credit for making the UF and the Congress doubly aware of the need for principles in politics!

The BJP's gameplan rattled Kesri so much that he said the Congress would consider joining the UF government if the ''proposal comes from them''.

Kesri did not say why on earth the UF should send such a proposal. The Congress supporting them from outside suits the UF very well.... And Kesri was soon seen eating his own words with the UF, notably the Communists, opposing the idea of sharing power with the Congress.

The grapevine has it that Kesri tried the trick to keep his flock together in the face of the BJP's threats to repeat an UP in New Delhi. Strengthening the theory is the fact that the Congress -- and for that matter the other parties -- did not speak of amending the anti-defection law when the Congress induced RJP leader Shankarsinh Vaghela to form a government in Gujarat after breaking away from the BJP last year.

The Congress did not -- and does not -- lament the fall in political morality vis-a-vis the Gujarat situation. In fact, Congress spokesman V N Gadgil recently said his party has kept the options of joining the Dilip Parekh government -- who succeeded Vaghela -- open.

Karnataka Chief Minister J H Patel, however, has welcomed the idea of the Congress joining the UF government. But he has an axe to grind in doing this. With a razor-thin majority, Patel is in a precarious position as former prime minister H D Deve Gowda has been breathing down his neck.

Patel, too, had to swallow his words. But that is nothing in politics. Swallowing words and huge chunks of public money have been the chief preoccupation of Indian politicians.

The Rediff Column

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