The siege within

Minister Suresh Mehta's resignation, though it was not accepted, indicates that dissidence poses a threat to the Gujarat Government.

V. VENKATESAN

WHEN Gujarat's Industries Minister Suresh Mehta, a former Chief Minister of the State, submitted his resignation on September 14, the second Keshubhai Patel Government suffered its first jolt since it assumed office in March 1998. Keshubhai Patel did not accept the resignation, and the Bharatiya Janata Party's central leadership persuaded Suresh Mehta not to insist on leaving the Government. Mehta also rejected attempts to compare his approach with that of former BJP rebel and now the chief of the Rashtriya Janata Party (RJP), Shankarsinh Vaghela, who brought down the first Keshubhai Patel Government in 1995: he preferred to call himself a disciplined soldier of the party. Still, the brief episode provided sufficient indication that all is not well with the ruling party in Gujarat.

Suresh Mehta ranks second in the Ministry. He was Chief Minister after Keshubhai Patel quit office in 1995 following Vaghela's rebellion. Party hardliners suspect that Suresh Mehta, a moderate, is a Vaghela sympathiser even though he remained with the party when Vaghela split the BJP Legislature Party and later launched the RJP. As Chief Minister, he put up a stoic defence when Vaghela brought down his Government with Congress support. He gracefully accepted Keshubhai Patel's leadership after the BJP returned to power.

However, despite his status in the Cabinet, Suresh Mehta has been humiliated and isolated by party hardliners. In the organisational elections in February, office-bearers were elected unanimously all over the State, except in Kutch, his home district, where the hardliners sought a contest. A Suresh Mehta supporter was elected district president, and the loser was a Keshubhai Patel follower, Dhirubhai Shah. Subsequently, Dhirubhai Shah won the Assembly election and became the Speaker.

The hardliners continued their assault. They forced the Chief Minister to remove Mehta's jurisdiction over the mines, industrial policy, petrochemicals and salt sectors which came under the Industry Ministry. Instead, he was given the less important portfolios of Tourism, Civil Aviation and Parliamentary Affairs.

Suresh Mehta also expressed dissent over the Government's handling of incidents of persecution of the minorities. He reprimanded the Vishwa Hindu Parishad for its recent attacks against the Christian community. But what provoked his resignation was the murder of his close associate, Bhaujibhai Jadeja, a landlord in Kutch district. An armed gang shot Jadeja on September 10 as he accompanied a Forest Department team that went to Banni village to conduct a raid on charcoal smugglers who allegedly felled trees. The forest officials fled from the spot. Suresh Mehta alleged that his rivals in the party were behind Jadeja's murder and that the Government protected the killers. The BJP and the Government have denied the charge. A few persons were arrested, but the main leaders of the gang reportedly escaped.

Jadeja was the sarpanch of Loria village and a district panchayat member. He used to provide information to the intelligence agencies on Kutch district, which borders Pakistan. He had battled against charcoal smugglers, who allegedly enjoyed the support of the local leaders of the Sangh Parivar.

UDAY ADHVARYU
Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel.

The murder of Jadeja, a Kshatriya, also brought to the fore the schism between the forward communities, Bhanusalis and Kshatriyas. Suresh Mehta alleged that Jayant Bhanusali, another BJP district panchayat member, was behind the murder. Jayant Bhanusali has threatened to sue Suresh Mehta unless he tendered a public apology for the accusation. Bhanusali, who demanded a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into the murder, urged the Chief Minister to accept Suresh Mehta's resignation and end the caste war in Kachch caused by his "irresponsible statements". The small and scattered Bhanusali community is rich and influential.

Jadeja, who had relatives in Pakistan, was believed to be a valuable source of information for the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). His involvement in the charcoal trade posed a threat to Bhanusali businessmen in the area whose main source of income was the trade. In the past, Suresh Mehta enjoyed the support of both communities. Bhansalis objected to his attempt to attribute the murder to intra-party rivalry without going into the decade-old professional rivalry between Jadeja and some Bhanusali businessmen. The Kachchi Bhanusali Seva Samaj alleged that Jadeja was a suspect in several police cases in Bhuj and an accused in three murder cases.

Suresh Mehta was angry that Keshubhai Patel and the local MLA did not even offer condolences to Jadeja's family. The party's central leadership shared Suresh Mehta's grief but sought to play down the matter. It pleaded with him to sort out the differences in the party. The party dismissed suggestions that Suresh Mehta had refused to withdraw his resignation. State BJP leader Rajendra Singh Rana explained: "The Chief Minister did not accept the resignation. Therefore, there is no need for him to withdraw the letter. His action does not constitute indiscipline." BJP general secretary M. Venkaiah Naidu, said that "perceptional differences" between the Chief Minister and Suresh Mehta led to the resignation episode.

Suresh Mehta said that he was waiting to convey his grievances to the central leadership, a clear signal that he was still undecided on continuing in the Ministry. Only party vice-president and Member of Parliament K.L. Sharma and Union Textiles Minister Kashiram Rana tried to mollify him. They managed to get a reprieve for the Keshubhai Patel Government, whose functioning has attracted criticism from within the Cabinet and the party. It appears that several Ministers and party MLAs are unhappy with the Chief Minister's style of functioning. It remains to be seen whether Suresh Mehta will emerge as a rallying point for dissidents.

Clearly, Suresh Mehta and his supporters are in no mood to break the party, but they could cause considerable embarrassment to it by resigning en masse from the Assembly, a course which Suresh Mehta himself indicated to Frontline on the eve of the Assembly elections. "We are not after power or portfolios," he said when asked whether he would accept the post of Deputy Chief Minister as a compromise to sort out the differences within the party.

Suresh Mehta's protest action has come at a time when the Chief Minister is under siege from within. Keshubhai Patel, who was the Sangh Parivar's unanimous choice for Chief Minister, faces isolation in the party and the Parivar. The hardcore section within the State BJP, led by BJP national secretary Narendra Modi, worked hard during the Assembly election to bring Keshubhai Patel back to power. However, this section is now dismayed that Keshubhai Patel, after taking over as Chief Minister, has kept Narendra Modi and his group at a distance. Keshubhai Patel did not give Cabinet status to Modi's confidante, Anandibehn Patel, who is now the Minister of State for Education. Recently he reversed Anandibehn's move to abolish Balaguru Yojana, a scheme introduced during Vaghela's chief ministership to ensure good primary education in the villages. According to sources, the Chief Minister also did not endorse her proposal to stop the mid-day meal scheme in schools.

UDAY ADHVARYU
Suresh Mehta, whose resignation as Industries Minister has not been accepted.

Observers see in the recent spurt of attacks carried out by the VHP against the minorities an attempt to defame the Keshubhai Patel Government (Frontline, September 11). The VHP is closer to Narendra Modi than to Keshubhai Patel, according to VHP watchers.

To cap it all, Keshubhai Patel's hands seem to be tied in respect of effecting ministerial changes. For instance, he has not been able to drop Deputy Minister for Labour and Employment Purushottam Solanki, who was indicted in the Srikrishna Commission Report for his role in the Mumbai riots following the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Purushottam Solanki was at that time an independent corporator in the Mumbai Municipal Corporation. He was elected to the Assembly on the BJP ticket from Ghogha in Bhavnagar district. Earlier he was with the RJP. He belongs to the influential Koli caste.

A whisper campaign is on within the party that it should no longer pay the price for Keshubhai Patel's "inefficient leadership". There is speculation in the State unit of the BJP that the party's central leadership is waiting for the Assembly elections in four States in November, after which Keshubhai Patel will be made a Governor, clearing the way for a new leader. There are complaints that power has been concentrated in the Chief Minister, his son-in-law Dr. Mayur Desai, and his favourite colleagues such as Home Minister Haren Pandya and Finance Minister Vajubhai Vala.

Although the Chief Minister refused to accept Suresh Mehta's resignation, he did not make any effort to address Suresh Mehta's problem of isolation within the party and the Government. On September 16, after the weekly Cabinet meeting, Keshubhai Patel entrusted the responsibility of briefing the media about the Cabinet decisions - usually exercised by the Chief Minister himself - to Vajubhai Vala as he left for Surat after the meeting to supervise flood relief work. Suresh Mehta, who should have briefed the media in the normal course, pleaded ignorance about this slight.

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