UP shatters 'Sonia' myth, crushes BJP giants
Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow
Election results in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, have shattered the myth of the much-touted Sonia Gandhi factor. And clearly went against some Bharatiya Janata Party hardliners.
While the Congress -- which ruled the state for more than four
decades -- faced a complete rout, the BJP -- despite taking its tally to an all-time high of 57 (plus three of its allies) -- failed to retain its nominees in some of the traditional strongholds. The state sends the maximum (85) members to the 543-member Lok Sabha.
Like Sonia, who was sure of the Congress winning her late husband Rajiv Gandhi's Amethi constituency, the BJP was overconfident
of its victory in the Ayodhya-Faizabad and the neighbouring Gonda constituencies. However, struggling for their survival in these two places were leaders of aggressive BJP subsidiaries.
Both the BJP's Ayodhya-Faizabad nominee Vinay Katiyar and
Gonda's Brij Bhushan Saran Singh have been facing a trial for their 'direct involvement' in the Babri mosque demolition.
Their defeat to Samajwadi Party candidates has come as a shock to the BJP leadership, which had taken in its stride the reverses it has suffered in 13 other constituencies. ''So what if we lost 15 of our seats?'' says state BJP chief Raj Nath Singh. ''We have added 20 new seats to our list.''
Chief Minister Kalyan Singh is not sure whether the two Hindu strongmen lost due to their fundamentalist campaign or some local issue.
''Why talk about the losses at this juncture?'' says Kalyan Singh. ''Look at the edge that we have taken over all other parties. The mandate exposes the pseudo-secularism of other parties.''
He was referring to the rout of the Congress, the Janata Dal, the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India-Marxist in the state.
Asked how the 'secular' Samajwadi Party has increased its tally from 16 in 1996 to 20 now, he says, ''If the SP has improved its tally, it is because of its caste vote bank.'' He calls SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav as ''anything but a true secularist, and more of a fascist''.
Refuting the argument, Union Communication Minister and
senior SP leader Beni Prasad Verma told Rediff On The NeT, ''The fact remains that the people have given our party an additional mandate of 6.7 per cent while the BJP increased its tally to 57 per cent. The results have proved that only the SP can take on the communal forces.''
For the Congress, nothing could have been worse than losing Amethi, a constituency held as a pocket borrough by the Indira Gandhi family since 1980, when her younger son Sanjay Gandhi first got elected from the constituency. ''Vote for me and I will convert Amethi into London,'' was his slogan. After Sanjay's
sudden death in an air crash, his elder brother Rajiv Gandhi took
the plunge into public life from Amethi, which he nursed with
care and devotion.
Following his assassination, his friend, Captain Satish Sharma was fielded from the constituency as a 'custodian' of the family and the romped home twice with a vast margin.
Though Captain Sharma had given up hope in this election, Sonia's visit together with her two children as well as son-in-law improved his chances. Sonia tried to strike an emotional chord, but the result shows that it did not work.
Captain Sharma's arrogant behaviour seems to have alienated him from the people. And, with the BJP fielding one-time Rajiv Gandhi confidant Sanjay Singh in Amethi, the ''Sonia myth has been demolished''.
Congress veteran Narain Dutt Tiwari has still not got over his shock of losing the Nainital seat to a political non-entity, Ela Pant, wife of former Congress leader K C Pant, son of UP's first chief minister Govind Ballabh Pant.
Though Tiwari refused to talk the media, he has quit as state Congress chief, accepting moral responsibility for the party's debacle.
Besides Nainital, the other major blow to the Congress
was dealt in Rampur, its traditional stronghold held
by Begum Noor Bano, the widow of the Nawab of the erstwhile
princely state. What is worse, she conceded the seat to
the BJP's Muslim nominee Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, considered the party's 'fake Muslim facade'.
Another major loss was that of former external affairs minister Salman Khurshid, whose victory was a foregone conclusion as the BJP's local Brahmin supporters had sworn to support him. ''The alleged involvement of the BJP's candidate Sakshi Maharaj in the murder of prominent Brahmin leader and BJP minister Brahm Dutt Dwivedi had alienated the Brahmin population,'' says a Congress leader. ''But I don't know what went wrong.''
Congress leader in the state assembly Pramod Tiwari attributes the party's debacle to ''the misuse of government machinery''. He remains evasive about the failure of the 'Sonia factor'.
The results have established the Bahujan Samaj Party's role as a 'spoiler in the whole game'. The party bagged only four seats, though it ended up in the third position in many constituencies. Most of its nominees managed to poll over 100,000 votes, indicating how the political picture of the state would have been reversed were it not for a divide in the anti-BJP vote.
Elections '98
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