POLITICS-INDIA: Ruling Coalition Troubled by Vajpayee’s Health

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Oct 9 2000 (IPS) - Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s admission Monday to a private hospital in the west coast city of Mumbai for knee surgery had revived speculation about the ability of his 21- party ruling coalition to hold together.

Vajpayee’s ailment came at a tricky time for his National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which needed his skills in political diplomacy to tackle an uneasy ally who was seen on its way out of the 21-party ruling coalition.

As soon as Vajpayee is able to attend to work, which doctors estimate would be early next week, he will have to pacify key ally Mamta Banerjee of the Trinamul (grassroots) Congress.

Banerjee and her party colleague Ajit Kumar Panja had quit as railway and junior foreign ministers respectively, over the late September hike in the prices of petroleum products. But, analysts said the real reason was local politics in her home state of Left-ruled West Bengal, which borders Bangladesh.

The fact that Banerjee withdrew her resignation last week on the basis of a faxed request from Vajpayee, saying that the price hikes could be reviewed after his surgery, was said to show the elder statesman’s popularity and acceptability as coalition leader.

However, Banerjee was said to be veering toward the main opposition Congress party from which she had broken away some years ago accusing it of not seriously challenging the communist rulers of West Bengal, who are about to a complete a record quarter century of unbroken power in the state.

Soon after its birth in December 1997, the Trinamul Congress teamed with Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and contested two national elections with the BJP. However, political observers noted that Banerjee was beginning to find that her alliance with the pro-Hindu BJP was a liability in secular-minded West Bengal.

Vajpayee’s government has not given in to Banerjee’s insistent demands for the sacking of the West Bengal government through the invocation of emergency federal provisions on the grounds of a breakdown in law and order.

With elections for a new assembly six months away, clashes have broken out between left cadres and Trinamul supporters in West Bengal. This, according to Banerjee, constitutes a breakdown in law and order and warrants federal intervention.

However, Banerjee’s demand failed to find sympathy from other key Vajpayee allies, specially the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), which rules southern Andhra Pradesh state and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) party, which is in power in adjoining Tamil Nadu.

Both the TDP and the DMK have been past ‘victims’ of federal intervention to sack their governments, when their common foe Congress ruled in New Delhi. Both are vehemently opposed to the exercise of the emergency federal power.

Banerjee is said to have realised that the only hope she has of dislodging the West Bengal government is the Congress, which has a large following in West Bengal.

Vajpayee’s moderate stand is said to have played a key role in putting the BJP into office with the help of regional parties who have declared their opposition to his party’s Hindu nationalist agenda.

At a BJP party convention in September, Vajpayee silenced party hawks who were unhappy with his trade-mark moderateness, his ‘softness’ toward Muslims and his pro-liberalisation policies.

When new BJP chief Bangaru Laxman, a member of India’s lowermost caste, declared that the minority Muslim community were “the blood of our blood and flesh of our flesh,” people saw clear signs of Vajpayee’s influence.

Beginning with the election which first put it in office in March 1998, the BJP was forced to shelve controversial poll planks — the building a Hindu temple in the northern town of Ayodhya at the site of the demolished Babri mosque and a common civil code for all religious groups in the country.

The BJP’s hardline affiliates continue championing these issues. But even they have come to realise that Vajpayee draws his power from the many regional coalition partners who are attracted by his moderate stance, but are uncomfortable with the BJP’s pro-Hindu agenda.

Recent setbacks in local polls are also said to have led the BJP to go soft on its pro-Hindu agenda. The party was routed in elections to local bodies in western Gujarat state, which was considered a BJP stronghold.