Author: Neerja Chowdhury
Publication: Rediff.com
Date: October 17, 2011
URL: http://www.rediff.com/news/column/the-national-implications-of-the-hisar-bypoll/20111017.htm
Hisar has turned out to be a double edged
sword for Team Anna. While it can now take credit for the Congress' rout in
Hisar, its stance in the bypoll has divided its own core team, says Neerja
Chowdhury.
Thanks to the Anna team, the Hisar bypoll
which would have otherwise received cursory noticed, acquired a national profile.
Thanks to the media coverage, the three main candidates in the fray -- victor
Kuldeep Bishnoi, runner up Ajay Chautala and Jai Prakash, who trailed as a
poor third -- suddenly became nationally known figures. To that extent the
Hisar bypoll, necessitated by the death of Bhajan Lal, one time Congress veteran
who had floated his own party towards the end of his life, is an Anna election.
The moot point however is different. Did the
Anna factor influence the poll outcome? Naturally members of the Anna team
are claiming it as their victory because the Congress candidate was badly
mauled and the other two candidates, who had given their support to the passage
of the Jan Lokpal Bill, unlike the Congress, captured the first and the second
positions.
The election outcome has been on expected
lines. In 2009, Jan Hit Congress leader Bhajan Lal had won and the Congress
had come third. Hisar is a non-Jat constituency and this used to favour Bhajan
Lal enabling him to win from here. This time too, it has gone to benefit his
son Kuldeep Bishnoi who had the additional advantage of an alliance with the
Bharatiya Janata Party.
It is naturally difficult to compute the difference
made by the Anna factor. What is however significant about this election is
not just the Jat versus non-Jat polarisation, but that the Jats have gravitated
behind Ajay Chautala, son of Om Prakash Chautala, instead of standing behind
the Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda or getting divided between the Congress
and INLD, which had happened in 2009.
Since Ajay Chautala hardly enjoys a scintillating
image, it was obviously not the corruption issue which swayed the Jats to
his side, but disenchantment with Hooda and his government, and this should
cause the Haryana CM worry. It will also embolden the dissidents in the party
to gun for him again. But the poll result may also be a straw to indicate
which way the wind may be blowing in Haryana, if the Jats are also looking
at the INLD with new eyes.
Instead of winning over Kuldeep Bishnoi to
his side -- for, after all, his father was a veteran Congressman -- the chief
minister fielded Jai Prakash again and what is more, staked his personal prestige
and camped there personally as did his ministers and he also invited other
high profile Congress leaders like Delhi CM Shiela Dixit to campaign in Hisar.
It is possible that the Anna factor helped
to consolidate the non-Jats behind Bishnoi that much more, and the Jats gravitated
towards Chautala en-masse in a counter-move, since he was the stronger of
the two Jat candidates and they did not want to waste their votes by backing
Jai Prakash. It could have been fear of the impact of the Anna factor which
further polarised an already polarised situation.
Theoretically speaking, the Hisar poll outcome
could have given a huge impetus to Team Anna to go for the kill in other states
going to the polls next year. And that is why, as part of a well thought through
strategy, they zeroed in on Hisar, knowing that the Congress was on a weak
wicket here. They must have thought that the Congress defeat would give them
a chance to claim it as their victory.
But Hisar has turned out to be a double edged
sword for Team Anna. While it can now take credit for the Congress' rout in
Hisar, its stance in the bypoll has divided its own core team. Santosh Hedge
has publicly questioned the wisdom of jumping into Hisar, and others like
Prashant Bhushan were reportedly against it.
The team singled out the Congress, as the
party to defeat. It jumped the gun even before the government had brought
the Lokpal Bill in the Winter Session of Parliament, which it had promised
to do. As has been pointed out by Congress leaders to underscore the Anna
team's bias against the party, they did not make Khadakvasla in Maharashtra
their testing ground, though it is only two hours away from Anna Hazare's
village Ralegan Siddhi, where Congress ally the NCP is in the fray against
the BJP.
This has raised questions in the minds of
its supporters and in the country about the non-partisan character of Anna's
anti-graft movement. To that extent, its credibility has been dented.
On its part, the Congress appears to have
launched a counter offensive at the political level. Digvijay Singh's attack
against Anna and his team is calculated to tie them in knots about the support
given them by the RSS -- and this is happening, with the RSS claiming to have
lent the agitation its backing and Anna Hazare denying it.
In the coming days, the Congress can be expected
to pursue a dual strategy of winning over Anna on the one hand -- Rahul Gandhi
is believed to have reached out to Hazare and the sarpanch of Ralegan and
others are meeting the scion of the Gandhi-Nehru family -- and delinking him
from his team, on the other hand, which is already beginning to happen.
Bhushan's statement favouring a plebiscite
in Kashmir has also widened the fault lines in Team Anna. Though Bhushan is
entitled to his view and the attacks on him are to be condemned in the strongest
possible terms, Bhushan is no longer just an individual. He is a public face
of Team Anna whose views are bound to have a bearing on the whole group and
what it wants to do.
Today, Anna and his team find themselves on
the defensive, whether it is on the issue of RSS support, or on Kashmir or
Hisar. Anna himself has resorted to a maun vrat to let the dust kicked up
by various controversies, settle.
Having evoked large scale support and having
raised high hopes, that things could be different, he would do well to keep
his attention focussed on the bull's eye -- that is a strong Lokpal Bill,
which ensures accountability of those in high office. And on mounting pressure
on every political party so that they field candidates with a clean image.
Getting into every contentious issue will only end up dissipating the movement
he has built up.
