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Sushma's fast-track career screeches to a halt at first speed-breaker

Suhasini Haider in New Delhi

At the beginning of this year, it seemed that Sushma Swaraj had her career made, as everything she touched turned to political gold. An ex-Socialist from George Fernandes's Socialist Party, who moved to the Bharatiya Janata Party in the early 1980s, she made it up the ladder fast and without looking back.

After six years in the Rajya Sabha, courtesy a BJP alliance with Om Parkash Chautala in Haryana, Swaraj then made local and national headlines as the BJP's articulate and glamorous new spokesperson. Her image as the no-nonsense, but suitably domesticated woman politician did her credit in the eyes of the public as well as the powers that be at the BJP. When they formed the government in March, Swaraj was a natural choice as a minister for information and broadcasting and also for communication when Buta Singh exited ingloriously.

Her supporters felt that all this success would definitely lead to even bigger things soon. In fact her victory procession in the parliamentary election from South Delhi bore the slogan, "Ab ki bari Atal Bihari, agli bari behen hamari (this time it is Atal Behari (Vajpayee), but next time it's our sister (Sushma)."

The honeymoon between the BJP and the electorate didn't last too long, though. And therein lay the beginning of Swaraj's troubles. The party high command (it is unclear at this point if that means Advani or Vajpayee) decided to send her in as the chief minister of Delhi, to try and salvage an election even they knew was lost.

"She tried her best," says Pushpinder Singh, a close friend and press manager, "She campaigned 18 hours a day for a month before the election. But what could she do, she was pitted against onions," he reasons, blaming the BJP's bad performance on vegetable prices.

It was an impossible mission from beginning to end, but somehow Swaraj grinned it out with the BJP's standard 'good soldier' grit. At the time, it seemed that the prime minister was fully aware of the party's bleak chances in Delhi, and kept not one but both her portfolios empty, waiting for her return. Swaraj felt that whichever way the polls went, she couldn't lose. She built her campaign around herself, and was projected as the 'CM with a mission, CM with a vision'. Every opinion poll showed Swaraj as the preferred choice for chief minister over Shiela Dikshit, her rival from the Congress.

Within the Delhi state wing of the BJP, though, hearts were afire. After all, when the fight was between whether Madanlal Khurana or Sahib Singh Verma really deserved the chief ministership (they have both served as CMs), how could Swaraj just breeze in, negate everything the Delhi government thought it had done so far, and then proceed to project herself as the only hope for the Bharatiya Janata Party in Delhi?

Of course Swaraj also played some politics. Having donned the robe with Khurana's encouragement, she then tried to befriend Sahib Singh, and in the process alienated both factions in the party. A close associate and admirer of Swaraj's told this correspondent that her now famous 'ghar ka chirag' statement was in response to the fact that Swaraj received little support from the party cadres who were either allied to Khurana or to Sahib Singh.

It is now well known that Swaraj paid for her outburst against Khurana and Sahib Singh by losing her berth in Vajpayee's Cabinet. The 'high command' has shown that it brooks no party indiscipline. And a suitably penitent Swaraj has for the moment declined to meet the press for interviews. "She's not a doll," explains her angry associate, "If someone asks her a question, she will give an honest answer. And that is the cause of all this trouble."

The day after Vajpayee swore in his three new ministers, Swaraj announced that she was resigning her seat in the Delhi assembly. While she claimed she had been asked to do this by the 'high command', insiders say that she went and asked the prime minister's permission to come back to Parliament of her own accord, and he merely acquiesced. The prime minister has had his own problems within the party, specifically the rivalry between his durbar and Advani's durbar (Swaraj is supposed to belong to the latter).

Saturday's Cabinet expansion was Vajpayee's way of driving the point home that in the post-assembly poll scenario, he and not Advani will be in charge. And it really made little difference to him whether Swaraj stayed at the state or the Centre.

However, within the members of the Delhi assembly, Swaraj has been criticised for leaving 'the sinking ship'. "Sushma Swaraj has behaved as a guest artiste in a Hindi film," says a disapproving BJP legislator, "What happened to her poll promises in Delhi? It seems her 'vision' was limited only to herself and her 'mission' ended when we lost the election."

The Congress party's Delhi unit, of course, has lapped all this up, and Chief Minister Dikshit even issued a statement criticising Swaraj's decision for leaving the state assembly for Parliament.

So where does Swaraj go from here? All said and done, she still retains a sizeable approval rating among BJP supporters. She has announced that she will spend the next couple of years nurturing her parliamentary constituency of South Delhi, and has been conducting visits to it everyday towards that end. There are rumours that the party satraps would like her to re-assume her previous post of party spokesperson, where they feel she is at her best. There is even talk that if Advani is allowed to prevail and rescue his 'good soldier', she might be rewarded with the deputy chairmanship of the Planning Commission.

Her supporters still hold out the hope that she will be accommodated in the next Cabinet reshuffle (many are convinced that Khurana will be asked to pick up the pieces of the Delhi debacle and rejuvenate the party in the state, while Swaraj will be given his portfolio of parliamentary affairs). However, if there is one thing that everyone, her detractors and defenders alike agree on it is that Swaraj may be down for the moment, but she is definitely not out. It is anybody's guess, for the moment, as to just how long it will take for her to bounce back.

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