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| ON THE MAT: BJP activists protest against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi over the coal blocks scam |
The tension was palpable. Just an hour earlier, they had been sitting happily huddled together over buttered toast and coffee. The men discussed cricket, and the women felt the weave of each other’s saris. But at the stroke of 11, they rose, briskly walking into the two houses of Parliament from the central hall. Suddenly a voice pierced the air. “Pradhan mantri, istifa do (PM must resign),” the back bencher shouted. The men and women who’d been sitting in perfect cross-party bonhomie were on their feet. And Parliament was stalled for yet another day.
With the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), it’s business as never before. The Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha are being adjourned day after day, as BJP members raise Cain in Parliament. Party leaders seated on the front rows gesture to back benchers. It’s a cue for them to troop into the well of the House, shouting slogans.
It’s not just another noisy day in Parliament. BJP leaders stress it’s their game plan to push the Congress into a corner. For the Opposition party, still licking its wounds after its 2004 electoral defeat, this is the time to strike. “At long last, we have sighted the elusive chair of power in South Block. It’s not out of our reach,” exclaims a senior BJP member of Parliament (MP).
The trigger is the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report on the allocation of coal blocks — said to have cost the exchequer a loss of Rs 1.85 lakh crore. “This is the first scam that points directly to the Prime Minister’s door and the Congress leadership,” the BJP MP points out.
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The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government is not unaccustomed to having allegations of corruption levelled at it. But the scandal over coal, BJP leaders stress, is big, since it focuses on the Congress, the BJP’s main rival. “In the 2G scam, DMK’s A. Raja was seen as the villain. We could not directly hurt the Prime Minister or any Congress leader,” the MP says.
To the BJP, the insinuations against the Prime Minister — who oversaw the coal ministry from November 2006 to May 2009 — have coalesced “seamlessly” with the “political potential” contained in a piece of coal.
“Koyla, to our people, is kaala sona (black gold). It became as precious as gold when international prices escalated. People didn’t comprehend the full import of the 2G scam. They were befuddled when we said the government sold air for crores of rupees. But they relate instantly to coal,” a source says, before rattling off the first slogan born out of what’s now being called “Coalgate” — “Koyla ki dalali hai, saari Congress kaali hai” (Coal has been bartered away, the entire Congress is black).
Not surprisingly, the BJP feels it now has a roadmap to power. After eight years in the wilderness — and what many see as a state of torpor — the party is ready to act. “Why should we be treated like pariahs,” asks BJP general secretary and chief spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad. “We have governments in nine states. Our governments have performed better than Congress governments on economic and social indices. People feel nostalgic about the NDA (National Democratic Alliance) government,” he maintains.
The BJP seems to have won over the support of the NDA in the campaign. To begin with, it appeared as if it would be a one-party fight — especially when partners Janata Dal (United) and Akali Dal vacillated. “I told the BJP, let’s insist on the cancellation of the allotments and allow Parliament to go on,” an Akali MP says.
But the BJP, which had been bitten by the JD(U) and the Shiv Sena in the presidential poll — they ratified Pranab Mukherjee’s candidacy — had made up its mind to go solo this time even if it meant disuniting the NDA. It would go on in “majestic isolation”, as party leader Arun Jaitley proclaimed.
“The plea of majestic isolation is an admission by the BJP of its political isolation and electoral marginalisation,” retorts minister of state Ashwani Kumar. In the end, though, the NDA stood as one. “We couldn’t do otherwise. Our feedback from the ground is that the koyla ghotala (coal scam) has become a talking point,” a JD(U) MP says.
Clearly, the BJP’s strategy is to occupy the anti-corruption turf. Till just a few weeks ago, it seemed the party had lost the plank to Anna Hazare and his team. Hazare had not only led the battle against the Congress on corruption but — much to the BJP’s dismay — seemed to have earned the support of the BJP’s parent body, the RSS.
“But the day Hazare’s team decided on floating a political party, the members lost their credibility,” the BJP leader exults. “I must admit we got rattled with the groundswell at Ramlila. We figured out that we were losing a lot of urban middle-class support to Hazare and company. The movement also coincided with the mesh of corruption charges our Karnataka government was entangled in. That’s when we decided we had to seriously reclaim this space.”
And for this, party leaders have been busy finalising their campaign. In a meeting of chief ministers convened on August 18, the chief ministers were briefed about the parliamentary strategies and asked to steer the campaign with “renewed” vigour in their states. Spokespersons were given similar briefs and told to “unleash” back-to-back assaults on the Congress.
The other directive was to attack non-NDA, non-Congress parties eyeing the same turf. The Left would be shrugged off as ineffective, and the SP and BSP as the Congress’s “B” team. “We will stress that their demands — a probe by a sitting judge, cancellation of coal allocations and resumption of Parliament — are aimed to help the Congress and the government. This tactic will ensure that the BJP has the anti-corruption space to itself,” the source states.
L.K. Advani with Opposition leaders Sushma Swaraj and Jaitley seems determined to go for the jugular. Advani has spoken to his peers such as Yashwant Sinha, Jaswant Sinha and Murli Manohar Joshi, seeking their endorsements.
Of course, it’s not as if the top leadership is totally united. When the top brass appeared in a power-packed show this week at the party headquarters, BJP president Nitin Gadkari was absent. He had left for a nearly month-long sojourn in Canada to be with his brothers. Apparently, Gadkari was not privy to the decision making. The party buzz is that a Rajya Sabha MP from Maharashtra, close to him, was a purported recipient of a coal block disbursed by the BJP government in Chhattisgarh.
Does that it imply that the RSS, Gadkari’s principal mentor, is looped out? The RSS disagrees. “We strongly feel that the UPA must be finished on the corruption plank. To that extent, the BJP championing the crusade has our hundred per cent backing,” a Sangh official says.
On the flip side, the source maintains that the RSS isn’t “wholly comfortable” with Advani’s exertions. It fears that if a mid-term election is forced before the BJP clinches its leadership conundrum, Advani might leverage his “acceptability” quotient with the BJP’s allies and position himself in the frontline.
Meanwhile, the BJP has already embarked on street protests in capitals and district headquarters. The protests might culminate in an NDA rally in Delhi next month. The modalities of the campaign will be put in place at the BJP executive and council meets in Faridabad in September.
But does the BJP really believe it will gain politically from its fresh assault? After all, its attacks on Manmohan Singh — to Advani he was the “weakest” Prime Minister — in UPA I boomeranged in 2009, when the UPA returned to power. “There’s a qualitative difference between 2004 and now. This time the Prime Minister looks guilty from day one,” a leader argues.
Some political observers, however, believe that the BJP may have to watch its back because public sympathy for aggressive politics is waning. “But this is not the first time — nor will it be the last time — that Parliament has stopped functioning,” a party leader points out. BJP leader Yashwant Sinha justifies the campaign, citing examples of how the Congress adopted “disruptive” practices when it was in the Opposition.
The BJP believes that if it hadn’t stalled Parliament in December 2010 demanding a joint parliamentary committee to probe the 2G scam, subsequent developments — from ministerial resignations to the cancellation of spectrum allocations — would not have happened. “A larger good came out of our tactics,” a leader maintains.
The party — which plans to stall Parliament till the last day — believes it has found the fabled goose that lays the golden eggs in “Coalgate”. But a senior leader acknowledges that before the party begins counting its eggs, the goose has to be fed. “The challenges before 2014 are many. We have to win the elections in Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Delhi,” he says. “Only then can we aim at the Lok Sabha poll.”
