The Yatra conundrum!

Yatra specialist in Indian politics, L.K.Advani started his first rath yatra from Somnath, Gujarat on September 25, 1990 to Ayodya on October 1990, to mobilize people for building a Ram temple. By the time he reached Ayodya, he had transformed it into the political face of Hindutva, the hawk that he came to be regarded as for many years after that. He and the BJP, reaped rich benefits from being the right wing hawk. The BJP rose to power in 1998-99 and Advani himself became Deputy Prime Minister.

Advani led Janadesh Yatra from the other three directions in Bhopal on September 25, 1994. This yatra was on the topic of religion bill. The fifth yatra named Bharat Suraksha Yatra for national security and unity started on 6 April 2006 to 10 May 2006. In between he led two others Swarna Jayanti Rath Yatra and Bharat Uday Yatra.

On October 11, the veteran ‘yatri’ Advani started his 40-day ‘Jan Chetna Yatra’ against corruption. BJP leaders may not have had very high expectations from, Advani’s journey- some saw it as a demonstration of the veteran warhorse’s prime ministerial ambitions, others as a move that could allow the party to appropriate the anti-corruption agenda set by Anna Hazare – but none of them could have anticipated the string of political disasters that has plagued the ‘yatra’. The expectation was that the series of reported scams would be showcased in his yatra to show ‘the complete moral decline of the UPA’. ‘Ab Bas’ – Enough is enough – was the chosen theme song. And the joke doing the rounds of the party was that ‘enough is enough’ could easily be a fit description of this sixth Advani yatra.

On October 10, Advani said, “There were 19 MPs who cross-voted. They were given bribes and were made to cross-vote (In defiance of their party whips). Corruption has helped UPA-I to survive” However, far from focussing on corruption in the UPA, certain events have, unfortunately for the BJP, turned the limelight on that party itself. Not soon after the yatra entered Madhya Pradesh, a scandal broke out in Satna, where journalists were handed over envelops containing cash, presumably to ensure favourable coverage for the Advani yatra as the veteran was to enter Satna the next day. The fact that he was forced to switch over to a helicopter to avoid, bad roads in M.P. – a state governed by his party for the better part of a decade – was also a poor advertisement for the BJP’s ability to deliver on governance. Finally on October 15, as the journey entered the fifth day, a court in Bangalore sent the former Karnataka Chief Minister B.S.Yeddyurappa to jail, along with former Minister S.N.Krishnaiah Setty, on corruption charges. Only a few weeks earlier, the party leadership was forced to sack Ramesh Pokhrial as Uttarkhand Chief Minister and replace him with B.C.Kanduri as corruption charges against Pokhrial mounted and could no longer be ignored. Against this backdrop, Advani’s anti-corruption yatra appeared to have lost all moral ground even before his rath rolled out from Bihar on its more than 7,000-km-long journey.

As for the ‘cahs-for-votes’ charge made by Advani, even as trial continues in court, two former and one sitting MP of the BJP have been sent to jail, along with former political aide of Advani himself, Sudheendra Kulkarni. Though cross-voting took place during the 2009 confidence motion, records maintained by the Lok Sabha secretariat state that the number of MPs who defied their party whips was 15, with both government and the opposition benefiting almost equally from the cross-votes, and not 19, as Advani said.

As many as seven MPs – six from Samajwadi Party and one from the Congress defied their party whips to vote against the government and with the opposition. The flow of cross-votes in the opposite direction was almost the same: eight MPs in all – four of the BJP, one each from the Biju Janata Dal, the Janata Dal (United), the Telugu Desam Party and the Janata Dal (Secular) – defied whips to vote for the government.

BJP leaders admitted privately that all four of their MPs who defied the whip that day — Brijbhushan Sharan Singh, H.T. Sangliana, Manjunath Kunnur and Somabhai Patel — were known to be disgruntled and were on their way out from the party. They had not been expelled earlier as that would have allowed them to retain their seats. Similarly, cross-voting by Congress MP Kuldip Bishnoi came as no surprise as he had, for all practical purposes, ceased to be a member of the Congress, having joined the political outfit set up by his father Bhajan Lal. The rest of the cross-voters were from the SP, which had become a divided house.

If all these MPs had voted in line with their party whips, the result of that vote in 2009 would have been 274 to 257 in favour of the government, instead of the actual result of 275 to 256. While the charge of MPs being bribed should still be investigated, the Lok Sabha secretariat’s data does undercut a foundational claim of Advani’s yatra: that bribery ensured the Congress victory in Parliament that day.

All these put paid to the hoax sought to be perpetrated by the saffron party – that it had earned the moral right to mount an offensive against the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre ‘on grounds of taint.’ This derived from the party’s self-indulgent claim that it was a clean party, or ‘a party with a difference’, to recall a shop-soiled self-description of an earlier era. The BJP lending its support to the Anna Hazare campaign with gusto, to the extent of declaring itself a camp follower (in a submissive letter by party president Nitin Gatkari to Hazare), and before that the RSS- the BJP’s ideological life-force publicing its organizational backing to the plank, were all carefully tailored to vicariously wear the halo of being anti-corruption fighters. Not many took note as the manicured perception took beating with the charges in Uttarkhand and Karnataka. It should cause no surprise if there are found to be other skeletons rattling in the BJP’s cupboard in Karnataka with links on high.

Official investigations are going on into the illegal mining rackets of embarrassingly significant proportions being allegedly spearheaded by other members of the erstwhile Yeddyurappa government (Reddy brothers) and patronized by leading lights of the BJP. The cuts of the power pie also went to the former leader’s acolytes. Within the BJP top leadership too, there were said to be Yeddyurappa patrons, the degree depending on what they could milk from the southern leader. The BJP saw Karnataka as its gateway to South India. The party’s actions while in power in the state do, however, prove to be its gateway to down of South India, into the sea waters.

Not able to suppress his prime ministerial ambitions Advani is on the rath yatra to advertise his party’s ‘probity’. In the wake of all these developments, he and his party may not be sure of what more is in store, so as to manage to end it with some grace, or forced to abruptly call it off!              r