14 April 2002
BJP TELLS CHANDRABABU TO GET
LOST IF HE WANTS SO
From Jal Khambata
PANAJI
(GOA): The Telugu Desam Party's protest at the Bhartiya Janata Party
politically capitalising communal carnage of Gujarat by deciding to
go for a snap poll brought out in open the trio who matters in taking
the real political decisions in the BJP.
The trio consists of
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani
and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan. They huddled
together in a room in the Raj Bhawan here Saturday night for almost
an hour holding strategic session and talking to TDP Chief and Andhra
Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu.
The clear message given to
Naidu is to go ahead and bring down the Vajpayee Government if he
wants to hoist the Congress in power if the next Lok Sabha elections
are forced in this manner. A top BJP source said the party wanted
this to happen a couple of months later but it will not bend backward
to sack Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi or scuttle the
Assembly's mid-term poll decided to seek the people's fresh
mandate.
Watching the drama were all those invited for a
banquet hosted in the honour of the Prime Minister by Goa Governor
Mohd Fazal. Even BJP President Jana Krishnamurthi was among the
spectators and Vajpayee did not even stop to tell him about the
outcome of his telephonic conversation lasting nearly 20 minutes as
he sped away in the car.
The trio swiftly moved to an ante
room as soon as the dinner was over and Mahajan picked up the phone
just after ten minutes of conversation among themselves to call up
Naidu in Hyderabad. The call over, they could be seen from distance
talking among themselves and then it was a long call by Vajpayee
himself.
While none of them were ready to say anything,
sources close to Advani said Naidu has been told in firm terms by
Vajpayee that his TDP will be responsible for any breakup of the
National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in power at the Centre and that he
should see the wisdom that any hasty decision would help none but the
Congress to come to power if the government falls and there is a
mid-term Lok Sabha poll.
Local daily Herald Editor Rajan
Narayan directly confronted the Prime Minister as he was rushing to
get into the car, asking him as to what is going to happen in
Gujarat. Vajpayee, however, remained tight-lipped. He, in fact, did
not speak to any of the assembled BJP leaders either.
Insiders
say the BJP is already apprehensive of its vote bank shrinking fast
as seen from the recent Assembly elections and as such it wants to
revive its own agenda that has given it so many seats in Parliament.
All the same, the BJP does not want to take the blame for breaking up
the NDA and as such it is just waiting for any of the major allies
rock the NDA boat. It will be seen as the BJP being the victim and
not culprit of breaking the alliance.
As the insiders point
out, the BJP is least concerned as to the vote banks of other allies
or about their views at the cost of its own base that is required to
be revived as fast as possible. When Advani told the party's national
executive on the second day of its 3-day session that ended here on
Sunday that there is no reason to be apologetic about the BJP's own
ideological moorings, he was giving the diktat to get ready to
canvass the BJP agenda to get back the votes that it has lost in
trying to pursue the policy of appeasement of the NDA allies.
It
will be no more so, though the BJP will keep harping on not ditching
the NDA or its common minimum programme and thus put the blame on
others if they desert the NDA. That itself will give a clear message
to its party cadres that the BJP is no longer going to play soft in
advancing its agenda that it had put on the backburner for the sake
of the unity of the NDA coalition. END