New Delhi

April 10, 2004

Foreign Hand to BJP's rescue?

Hightech BJP General Secretary Pramod Mahajan has brought in a team of foreign hands, or to be precise the foreign-trained hands, to help him in planning the party's election campaign in Uttar Pradesh.

He has been made the overall incharge of the campaign in Uttar Pradesh and he knows that the issues that click in this Hindi heartland are Ram Mandir, anti-cow slaughter and swadeshi. So what are the foreign-trained guys doing in this state? Pramod wants them to promote these very issues but in a hightech style.

Heading the team is an old RSS hand educated abroad, Prabhat Jha, who has developed a campaign to sell Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee as the brand, telling the people to vote for this brand rather than bother about who is the party's candidate. His teammates include 29-year old Dr Subro Kamal Datta who did his PhD in economics from Australia but flew back to India to become a BJP national executive member. Other in the team are 28-year old Anil Pandey, an MBA from the US, Dr Manoj Misra, a data expert, and Dr Rajendra Jaiswal, a PhD from California. Lotus, the BJP's symbol, and Vajpayee are the brands they intend to market by putting them on rings, lockets, bangles, pens, shirts and kites in saffron.

Kalyan Singh's Travails

Former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kalyan Singh is getting disillusioned over his own BJP leaders not giving him a helping hand to turn the tide in favour of the party in the Lok Sabha elections. When he joined the BJP in February, he had forecast the party winning at least 60 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats from U.P. and it was his estimate that gave confidence to the BJP leadership to claim the party would win the majority on its own. Kalyan Singh has been, however, reducing his own estimate, much to the chagrin of the leadership which tried to pull him up for making public his assessments. Kalyan Singh, however, shot back that the leadership was allowing his rivals in the BJP to sabotage the party's success by not yet getting out to mount the election campaign. He is alone campaigning and addressing eight to ten meetings a day but how can he cover such a big state all alone if others do not campaign, he asked. That is why a fortnight ago, he scaled down the BJP's winning seats from 60 to 55 in Uttar Pradesh and two days ago he said the BJP should be happy even if it gets 45 seats. Insiders say Kalyan is not trying to demoralise the BJP cadres as all that he has been saying is based on the internal survey carried out by the party itelf with the help of the observers posted in every district.

Deve Gowda's Disappointments

Former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda has been campaigning for a Congress-led coalition to defeat the BJP-led NDA in this Lok Sabha elections and a minimum courtesy that he expected from the Congress was to help him enter the Lok Sabha without any stiff opposition. But that has not happened as the Congress may see in him a strong ally in the national politics but Karnataka Chief Minister S M Krishna finds threat to his empire from Deve Gowda because his Janata Dal(Secular) has fielded some 90 candidates in the Assembly elections besides also contesting eight Lok Sabha seats. More embarrassing for Deve Gowda is that he would have to contest for two Lok Sabha seats. He had filed his nomination for Kanakapura seat and was a dummy candidate of Janata Dal(S) in Hassan, his own home constituency. B R Gurudev, who was supposed to be the JD(S) candidate from Hassan, is out since his nomination papers were rejected and so Deve Gowda has no choice except to remain in the field also from Hassan or else let it be a straight fight between Congress and BJP. Congress has fielded Revenue Minister H C Srikantaiah while the JD(S)-BJP alliance has put up former Minister H N Nanje Gowda.

The political joke going on in Bangalore, however, is that Deve Gowda ran back to own constituency of Hassan because the Congress has fielded a woman candidate from Kanakapura and an astrologer has predicted that he would face certain defeat if he has to face a woman candidate. Urban Development Minister D K Shivakumar was selected by the Congress to contest from Kanakapura but at the last minute the ticket was given to tlevision journalist Tejaswini Sriramesh as the Congress too wants to rely on the astrologer prediction. Deve Gowda is, however, still for the Congress-led government at the Centre even as he and his partymen campaign vigorously for defeat of the Congress in Karnataka.

Arif Mohammed - a Disappointment for the BJP?

The BJP has ultimately found former Union Minister Arif Mohd Khan of no use in wooing the Muslim votes and hence he has been written off with the prize of the party ticket for Kaiserganj. The Congress who had a prized catch in Syed Shahabuddin, a former diplomat-turned politician who hit the headlines for heading a committee for Babri Mosque. The Congress wants to use Shahabuddin in Uttar Pradesh but leaders of the Muslim organisations point out that the Muslims will be doing "tactical voting" and would not go to any party as a whole. That is why there is no big welcome to the Samajwadi Party promising ten per cent reservation to Muslims in its manifesto out on Friday.

More time on the AIR and Doordarshan for the Congress

The Congress has an upperhand as a party having maximum representatives in Parliament and in Legislatures and this advantage has gone in its favour in getting timeslot of 25 minutes more than the BJP on AIR and Doordarshan when the time allocation for various parties was finalised this week under the supervision of an Election Commission official. All national parties -- Congress, BJP, BSP, NCP, CPI and CPM -- get equal 85 minutes for airing their views on elections plus extra bonus for their strength of MPs, MLAs and MLCs. The Congrs got extra 145 minutes while the BJP got 120 minutes. All others got extra 20 minutes each except for the CPI which got 15 minutes extra.

Tipoo's Sword - Mallya's 'weapon in the Elections

The Karnataka BJP has sought permission from the national leadership to felicitate industrialist Vijay Mallya for restoring India's honour that had been taken away to Britain 205 years ago by the British invaders. He has bought the legendary sword of Tipu Sultan, the tiger of Mysore, which was captured by the Britishers in 1799, by paying Rs 1.50 crores in an auction in London in September last year. The Karnataka BJP want to embarrass him by honouring him for bringing back the sword, an Indian honour, as that will demoralise his Janata Party which has put up candidates for six Lok Sabha seats and more than 100 assembly seats in Karnataka.

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