The battles within

Both the Congress (I), which is fighting to stay on in power, and the BJP face internal tussles in the run-up to the Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh.

V. VENKATESAN

MADHYA PRADESH, where Assembly elections are to be held on November 25, is the only State in the Hindi heartland where the Congress(I) is in power and the party is now making a serious bid to retain power. The Congress(I) won 174 seats in the 320-member Assembly in 1993, and the principal Opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, won 116 seats. However, the Congress(I) fared badly in the State in the Lok Sabha elections in 1996 and 1998; it won only 10 of the 40 parliamentary seats each time.

The Congress(I) wrested power from the BJP in 1993 largely owing to the unity exhibited by its State-level leadership; likewise, the setbacks it suffered in the two Lok Sabha elections were attributed to disunity in the party. In 1996, the All India Indira Congress (Tiwari) led by former Union Minister Arjun Singh and the Madhya Pradesh Vikas Congress floated by Madhavrao Scindia damaged the Congress(I)'s prospects. Although Arjun Singh and Scindia subsequently returned to the Congress(I) fold, the party fared no better in the 1998 elections. An intra-party analysis of the reasons for the debacle in 1998 concluded that far from strengthening the party, the return of Arjun Singh and Scindia had intensified factionalism. One faction campaigned intensively to have Digivijay Singh replaced as Chief Minister. However, party president Sonia Gandhi has made it clear that she wishes to see Digvijay Singh continue as Chief Minister; at the party's brain-storming session in Pachmarhi in September she warned against disunity in the State unit.

However, in the run-up to the Assembly elections differences have surfaced once again in the State unit. The faction led by Arjun Singh and All India Congress(I) Committee (AICC) spokesperson Ajit Jogi wanted the party to enter into a formal alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party(BSP) in the State; most other State Congress(I) leaders, including Digvijay Singh, disfavoured any such move.

The BSP, which has 11 seats in the current Assembly, won two parliamentary seats from the State in 1996 but drew a blank in 1998 although its share of the popular vote edged up from 8.18 per cent in 1996 to 8.70 per cent in 1998. Many leaders who left the Congress(I) and joined the BSP around the time of the 1996 elections have since returned. Former Union Minister Arvind Netam, a leader of the tribal communities, defected from the Congress(I) to the BSP in a flourish but returned after a few months.

SHANKER CHAKRAVARTY
Chief Minister Digvijay Singh.

Many Congress(I) leaders feel that the party would not benefit from an alliance with the BSP since, in their view, the BSP has little influence in the State's politics. They also argue, citing the BSP's record in Uttar Pradesh, that that party is an unreliable ally. However, observers say that for most Congress(I) leaders the more compelling reason why the party should not ally itself with the BSP, a party that predominantly represents the political interests of Dalits, is that such a move would alienate upper-caste voters from the Cong-ress(I). (Significantly, the Congress(I) performed fairly creditably in the reserved seats in the 1993 Assembly elections. There are 116 reserved seats in the State - 42 for the Scheduled Castes and 74 for the Scheduled Tribes. The Congress(I) won 68 of these seats, whereas the BJP won 35.)

However, even those leaders who disfavoured a formal alliance with the BSP will be prepared to do business with that party, especially if the elections throw up a hung Assembly. Even now, the Congress(I) expressed its keenness to have an "informal understanding" with the BSP so as to avoid contests between the two parties and face the BJP together. Congress(I) strategists reasoned that since the BSP had decided to contest only about half of the Assembly seats, there was room for an understanding in respect of many constituencies in order to prevent the BJP from coming to power.

At the BSP's first election rally in New Delhi on October 25, party supremo Kanshi Ram declared that the party would go it alone in Madhya Pradesh and in the other States where Assembly elections are scheduled. However, he appealed to BSP supporters to vote strategically in order to defeat the BJP. His party colleague and former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, however, evidently saw no merit in this strategy. She complained that whereas other parties with whom the BSP had allied in the past had benefited from a "transfer" of votes from the BSP's supporters, her party had not benefited from a similar transfer of support from other parties.

The BJP does not appear to be overly concerned about the possibility of an understanding between the BSP and the Congress(I). The BJP expects that if such an understanding does come about, upper-caste supporters of the Congress(I) would turn to the BJP. This theory, however, has not been validated in the State.

Besides, the BJP is mired in internal bickering over the choice of the chief ministerial candidate. Although the party announced its candidates for the chief ministership in Rajasthan (Bhairon Singh Shekhawat) and Delhi (Sushma Swaraj), where it is in power, it has not so far projected any leader in Madhya Pradesh. Party president Kushabhau Thakre was about to announce that former Chief Minister Sunderlal Patwa would be the party's choice to head a BJP Government in Madhya Pradesh, but under pressure from Patwa's critics, including senior leader Vijayaraje Scindia, the party decided to defer the announcement. It claimed that the party did not traditionally project anyone for the post of Chief Minister.

Although the party is loath to admit it, the party has had to defer a decision because of pressure from the many claimants for the post. Besides Patwa, Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly Vikram Verma, former Chief Ministers Kailash Joshi and V.K. Saklecha and president of the State party unit Nand Kumar Sai are believed to be in the race. To project one of them would have inevitably led to ruptures, and in the final analysis the BJP has opted to play it safe.

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