Kalyan govt's victory raises BJP's political stock

Tara Shankar Sahay in Delhi

By winning the trial of strength on the floor of the Uttar Pradesh assembly, Kalyan Singh has raised the stock of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the politically crucial state.

Kalyan Singh's feat is seen, in political circles here in Delhi, as a triumph of political arithmetic. The evening before the vote of confidence, the chief minister could count on 177 votes (including two from its ally the Samata Party). To win the vote, however, he needed 213 votes in a house with a total strength of 425.

The BJP leader not only got to his target, but in fact exceeded it to register a tally of 222 votes -- in other words, a comfortable majority. The accusations of horse trading have been immediate and inevitable -- but political reality being what it is, the only fact that matters is that the government survived despite the seemingly crippling blow dealt to it by Mayawati when she withdrew the support of the Bahujan Samaj Party on Sunday.

Significantly, BJP president Lal Kishinchand Advani had met President K R Narayanan at Rashtrapati Bhavan on Tuesday morning, and conveyed to the latter the BJP's apprehension of violence. Meanwhile, senior BJP leader Jaswant Singh and party spokesperson Sushma Swaraj conveyed essentially the same apprehension to Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral. And the BJP has, in the aftermath of the victory, been quick to give credit to both the President and the prime minister for assuring them that in no case would the Constitution be permitted to be subverted.

If the BJP's stock has soared following the events in the assembly today, then the BSP's stock has as dramatically plunged. Party supremo Kanshi Ram and former chief minister Mayawati caused the 67 party legislators to be sequestered ahead of the actual vote, in order to prevent anyone so inclined from crossing over to the BJP side of the fence. However, now that the Kalyan Singh government is firmly reinstalled in Lucknow, there is a very real fear that disgruntled BSP MLAs could cross over to the winning side.

Another face with a certain amount of political egg on it belongs to the 13-party United Front conglomerate, which had done its utmost to ensure the BJP government's defeat. Following Kalyan Singh's triumph, the UF leadership has been quick to condemn it as a win brought about by unfair tactics, but the fact remains that by taking on their combined might and that of the BSP and emerging triumphant, Kalyan Singh and the BJP has dealt a mortal blow to the UF presence in the state.

The BJP victory will also be worrisome to Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party which has 110 seats in the state assembly. Despite its numerical strength, the SP has been at loggerheads with the BSP, BJP and the Congress, under the illusion that at some stage, it could make a solo bid for power. That illusion is now effectively shattered, and Mulayam Singh is left with no alternative but to court his erstwhile political adversaries in order to unseat the BJP from power.

For the Congress, meanwhile, the loss is palpable, and evident -- in the reduction of its strength in the House from 37 to 15 thanks to the breaking away from the parent body of Naresh Agarwal and 18 other MLAs, who formed the breakaway Loktantrik Dal. To the chagrin of the Congress, three more MLAs joined the Agarwal faction on Tuesday morning, swelling its strength to 22 and reducing the Congress presence in the largest assembly in the land to a pitiful 15.