Author: T V R Shenoy
Publication: Rediff.com
Date: July 14, 2008
URL: http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/jul/14flip.htm
The Honourable Member of Parliament from Phulpur,
Ateeq Ahmad (Samajwadi Party), is in jail. He stands charged with the murder
of Bahujan Samaj Party MLA Raju Pal.
The Honourable Member of Parliament from Ghazipur,
Afzal Ansari (Samajwadi Party), is in jail. He is accused of complicity in
the murder of BJP leader Krishnanand Rai.
The Honourable Member of Parliament from Siwan,
Mohammed Shahabuddin (Rashtriya Janata Dal), is in jail. He has been convicted
in the murder of CPI-ML worker Chhote Lal Gupta.
The Honourable Member of Parliament from Madhepura,
Rajesh Ranjan ('Pappu Yadav'), is in jail. He was sentenced in the case of
the murder of CPI-M MLA Ajit Sarkar.
The Honourable Member of Parliament from Balia,
Suraj ('Surajbhan') Singh (Lok Janshakti Party), is in jail. He was found
guilty in the case of the murder of a farmer, Rami Singh of Madhurapur-Purvatola
village in Begusarai District.
Please note that when I write 'is in jail'
it refers strictly to the time of writing. I understand that each of the five
honourable Members of Parliament will be permitted to vote in the Lok Sabha
on the issue of the nuclear deal.
First things first: I estimate that there
is a 99 per cent chance of the Manmohan Singh ministry winning a Vote of Confidence
in the Lok Sabha. (Or, alternatively, of fending off a No-Confidence Motion.)
I would have calculated its chances of survival at 100 per cent but let us
not forget that we are talking about politicians here.
But what comes next? The frustration and pent-up
anger of the Congress at its fifty month-long association with the Left Front
has been only too evident in the past week. It took Lalu Prasad Yadav to remind
everyone that the Left Front would, probably, be needed once again after the
next general election.
You know the Congress has crossed the limit
when our beloved railway minister stands out as a beacon of reason.
Yet, no matter what happened in the past fifty
months, does the Congress think the next ten months shall be any better? The
Manmohan Singh ministry needs every vote it can muster; that means the five
honourable Members of Parliament named above must be brought from their jail
cells to Parliament House, television cameras recording every move. It shall
be, to say the least, an unsavoury beginning to the new alliance.
As a matter of fact, the bargaining has begun
before the debate has even begun in the House. Amar Singh has laid forward
a set of demands. Shibu Soren's camp has leaked that its leader wouldn't say
no to the Union coal ministry. The Congress, in a space of mere weeks, may
look back nostalgically at the good old days of its dalliance with the Left
Front.
After all, the CPI-M leaders are intelligent,
articulate, and observe certain norms. Can you imagine a Prakash Karat speaking
of his meetings with the UPA chairperson in terms of 'suhaag-raat' ('wedding
night') and 'balaatkaar' ('rape')? I know several Congressmen who cringed
at the Samajwadi Party general secretary's alleged words but nobody dared
to raise a voice, and it fell, oddly enough, to the BJP and the CPI-M to protest
the insult to women in general and to Sonia Gandhi in particular.
And what exactly is the Congress going to
gain at the end of it all? Some Congressmen say their alliance with the Left
Front was always 'unnatural.' True, but how is the alliance with the Samajwadi
Party any less 'unnatural?'
The point has not been lost on at least one
Congress leader, Rahul Gandhi. The Nehru-Gandhi scion knows that the Congress
must regain its old standing in Uttar Pradesh, India's largest chunk of votes,
if it is to stand on its own feet. He has reportedly pointed out how the Congress
struck a poor bargain twelve years ago when the party made an electoral alliance
with the Bahujan Samaj Party for the Uttar Pradesh Vidhan Sabha elections.
Isn't the Samajwadi Party as much of a competitor to the Congress in Uttar
Pradesh as the CPI-M is in Kerala and West Bengal?
Rahul Gandhi is right to be wary about the
Samajwadi Party, and you need look no farther than one of the family boroughs
to bear him out. Today we tend to think of Rae Bareli and Amethi as the traditional
constituencies of the Nehru-Gandhis but it wasn't always so.
In the first general election, Jawaharlal
Nehru was elected from 'Allahabad District (East) cum Jaunpur District (West)';
his successor in subsequent Lok Sabha polls was no less than Lal Bahadur Shastri.
In 1957 and 1962, Pandit Nehru chose to contest from Phulpur; the seat was
won by his sister, Vijayalakshmi Pandit, after his death. Guess which party
holds the Allahabad and Phulpur seats today?
In the last 2004 general election, the Congress
candidate from Allahabad, Satya Prakash Malviya, wasn't just beaten; he suffered
the humiliation of losing his deposit in the home of the first three Congress
prime ministers. Malviya had company in the Congress nominee from Phulpur,
Ram Poojan Patel, marked in the Election Commission's
annals with the chilly word 'Forfeited'.
The successful candidate from Allahabad was
the Samajwadi Party's Kunwar Rewati Raman Singh ('Mani Ji'). As for Phulpur,
it is currently represented in the Lok Sabha by the man mentioned in the first
sentence of this column.
If I may digress a bit, isn't this a shocking
commentary on Uttar Pradesh politics? To think that a constituency represented
by Jawaharlal Nehru and Vijayalakshmi Pandit is now held by a man behind bars!
Rahul Gandhi has the responsibility of nurturing
the Congress back to strength in Uttar Pradesh. But how can he do so without
stepping on the toes of his dear friends in Amar Singh's party?
The saddest part in the story is bound to
be played by poor Dr Manmohan Singh. He has staked his government's future
on the nuclear deal; he is now duty-bound to stick on in office until it makes
its leisurely course through the United States Congress, the International
Atomic Energy Agency, and the Nuclear Suppliers Group -- months of bullying
by 'allies' anxious to make their mark before the inevitable elections.
Confronted with the prospect of such humiliation,
some Congressmen may prefer instant elections. But, even if the spectres of
rising inflation and failing growth didn't haunt the party, rest assured that
the Honourable Ateeq Ahmad, the Honourable Afzal Ansari, the Honourable Mohammed
Shahabuddin, the Honourable Rajesh Ranjan ('Pappu Yadav'), and the Honourable
Suraj ('Surajbhan') Singh will not let Dr Manmohan Singh fall come the twenty-second
of July!
Tailpiece: Two men, Prakash Karat and Manmohan
Singh, have dominated the headlines over the nuclear deal. Weirdly, neither
is a member of the Lok Sabha, so neither may cast a vote in the House in that
epochal vote!
