Kalyan Singh tipped as Advani's successor

Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow

Kalyan Singh is being tipped to succeed Bharatiya Janata Party president Lal Kishinchand Advani whose term expires this autumn.

The reasons for such a move are described as more than finding a new incumbent for the BJP's top job.

By electing its first-ever backward caste president, the BJP would be in a position to erase its 'upper caste' label; it could go to town trumpeting its sacrifice of the Uttar Pradesh chief minister's office in favour of a dalit woman who was installed with the party's support; besides, of course, paving the way for an alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party at the national level.

What has given momentum to the idea is the lobbying by a powerful upper caste group to keep Kalyan Singh away from power in UP. Under the power-sharing arrangement worked out with the BSP, Kalyan Singh is scheduled to take over as the chief minister of India's most populous state from Mayawati in September.

Not all the BJP's leaders in UP are in favour of Kalyan Singh doing so. The dour Singh has a reputation for being forthright and stubborn, unwilling to compromise on issues like corruption. Many of the BJP's ministers, who are currently having a field day with an uninterfering Mayawati, are only too aware of the travails they would have to undergo in a Kalyan Singh administration.

Says a senior BJP minister, who is not happy with the current dispensation, "With Kalyan Singhjiaround, you cannot get away with all the hanky-panky that some of my colleagues are now indulging in."

Another Kalyan Singh supporter, who is sore with the party leadership for kow-towing to the BSP, remarks, "Kalyan Singh will neither indulge in any irregularity nor brook any nonsense from anyone; he likes straight people."

The upper caste lobby within the BJP has always been opposed to Kalyan Singh who was appointed chief minister in 1991 largely because he was the party's only backward caste leader. Once he established himself as a leader of consequence, upper caste leaders in the BJP began to find fault with him. A section of this upper caste lobby even went to the extent of linking some of Singh's supporters in the Brahmdutt Dwivedi murder case. Dwivedi, a minister in the Kalyan Singh cabinet, was killed earlier this year.

Said Sakshi Maharaj, MP, 'I am being accused simply because I happen to be close to Kalyan Singhji, who is the actual target of the brahmin lobby.'

To keep Kalyan Singh out of the chief minister's office, his opponents have begun a campaign to elevate him to the BJP presidency. With Advani's term coming to an end later this year, it is time to look for a successor. And it does not matter to many BJP leaders in UP if Kalyan Singh succeeds Advani. That, rather than have Kalyan Singh succeed Mayawati in UP.

Even as former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee denies that there is a proposal to let Mayawati continue for another six months after her present term expires in September, party insiders confirm that such a move is in the offing. And there is no better way to ease out Kalyan Singh than to give him a kick upstairs...

Sources say such a move could help the BJP in more ways than one. "Besides sending out the message that an upper caste BJP is willing to sacrifice the UP chief minister's chair for the sake of a dalit woman, it would also enable the party to strike a quid pro quo with the BSP for a national-level alliance in the next election," reveals a senior BJP leader, who contradicts Vajpayee's claim that there is 'no talk of a national- level alliance with the BSP so far.'