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The decision of the Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi to go in for an early poll has not surprised anyone. Ever since the State began to limp back to normal after the recent communal carnage, an early poll had become a distinct possibility. Modi, it seems, was keen to obliterate the searing memories of the riots and get on with the more urgent tasks of development. However his critics doggedly kept alive the agonizing agenda of religious rioting, seizing in the divisive violence an opportunity to humiliate and isolate the Gujarat Chief Minister. Modi was undeterred. He stood his ground and decided to take the fight to the enemy camp.
The decision to hold the elections nearly nine months before these became due is his way of challenging his critics to stop beating the drum of communal riots and instead beat him in the electoral contest. Ultimately, in any democratic polity the people alone are the best judges of a leader's worthiness or lack of it. Modi has thrown the gauntlet to the Opposition. And it is hoped the latter will pick it up, albeit reluctantly.
For, the Opposition seems unprepared to face the poll at this juncture. Having played politics with the victims of the communal frenzy, the Opposition now finds itself on the defensive. On the eve of the dissolution of the State Assembly, it found itself in complete disarray. The Congress Party, the main Opposition in the State, was a house divided against itself. Faction-ridden Congress was groping in the dark as to how to offer a semblance of resistance to the advancing caravan of Modi.
Hence its decision last week to install the wily Shankarsinh Vaghela as the President of the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee. Without doubt, it was an admission of failure by the Congress High Command that it did not have anyone else other than the former RSS\BJP strongman in the party who could lead it in the crucial battle at the hustings. Vaghela had laid the foundations of what is now the Sangh parivar in the State. He was the quintessential RSS worker who had for nearly five decades laid the organizational network of the RSS-BJP in Gujarat. Indeed, before his expulsion from the BJP it was no exaggeration to suggest that he was the tallest leader of the RSS\ BJP in Gujarat.
It was therefore ironic in the extreme that the Congress Party fell back on the self\same Vaghela, the former RSS\BJP strongman, and appointed him as its chief in the State much to the chagrin of senior Congress leaders in the State. Now, the Congress Party would be fighting the RSS\BJP in the coming election with a former RSS\ BJP man as its leader in Gujarat. Whether the appointment of Vaghela as the GPCC chief reflected the Congress high command's faith in the old saying about setting a thief to catch a thief or it was plain desperation was hard to tell. But the point must be noted that the Congress is not a 'dhobi-ghat' where the sins of everyone who joins it can be washed away. Vaghela's political ambitions might have forced him to join the Congress Party but he cannot wish away his RSS\BJP mindset.
To seek to oppose the NDA's vice-presidential candidate, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, for his RSS background, and to prop up Vaghela as its leader in Gujarat somehow sound highly incongruous. But, then, ideology is a convenient garb which parties and politicians wear only to further their narrow interests. Fighting the RSS\BJP ideology is not important to the Congress Party, winning the election by hook or crook is. That is the only reason why it has installed Vaghela as its leader in Gujarat.
Vaghela's appointment apart, the fuss being made over the timing of the dissolution of the State Assembly is bound to drag the Election Commission in the vortex of partisan debate. Busybodies like the former prime minister I. K. Gujaral have already seized on the opportunity to grab public attention. As soon as it became known that Modi had gone for early elections, Gujaral gathered a group of like-minded busybodies to go and represent before the Election Commissioners against an early poll in the State. (Remember the previous day Gujaral was first off the blocks, seizing the photo opportunity to felicitate the president-elect, Abdul Kalam.)
The law is very clear on the subject and allows for little discretion in the matter. Since the six-month period between the last session of the Assembly and the next one will end sometime in early October, the process of electing the new House must be completed by late September. There are no ifs and buts in that constitutional equation. However, the Centre alone can intervene by enforcing president's rule in the State and thus helping to get round the six-month stipulation. But clearly it is unlikely to impose central rule in the State so that Modi's critics could gloat over his removal. In other words, a late September poll is unavoidable.
Meanwhile, it is hoped that they
would stop stoking communal passions. And stop coming up with horrendous
theories like the one being peddled by the secularist media that the Godhra
carnage was the handiwork of the men, women and children travelling in
the ill-fated bogey who perished in the fire so that their sacrifice could
set Gujarat aflame. Give your over-imaginative brains the much-needed respite.
Think sensibly, that is, if you can.
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