No mercy for BJP’s admirers of Jinnah in India poll battles

As invectives and innuendos by parties and candidates are growing sharper and louder in the run-up to India’s general election, the split voices in BJP, the principal opposition party in the just dissolved parliament, too are getting louder. Jaswant Singh, a member of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s cabinet, is contesting the election as an independent from Rajasthan’s Barmer district bordering Paksitan’s Sindh province after being denied party ticket. For his sins of omission or commission, which include his admiration of Mr Jinnah as a secular leader in his book on Pakistan’s founder , he has been expelled from the party for six years. Another admirer of Mr Jinnah’s secularim, former deputy prime minister L.K. Advani was denied the party ticket from his preferred constituency of Bhopal and instead made to accept the Gandhinagar seat from Gujarat under the shadow of Gujarat chief minister and party’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, once Advani’s protégé. The humiliation of Advani packed in this arrangement is writ large and is out on the national scene for all to see. Both Singh and Advani are party’s known faithful adherents and only mildly appreciative of Mr Jinnah’s secular image, but that is enough fire material for their detractors. Reacting to the treatment meted out to him, Jaswant Singh said there was “total confusion” in the party over the norms and values it stood for. “A party that cannot afford its most loyal adherents even the very basic courtesies and puts petty whims of individuals ( like current president Rajnath Singh and his clique) before the greater good of the people has certainly lost its vision and frittered away its virtues for temporary political gains. To what end, only time will tell.” An embittered leader, Singh said the BJP which he joined at its foundation in 1980 was no longer what its founders Vajpayee , Advani and others including himself had envisioned. Singh’s wife, Sheetal Kanwar, said that her husband had helped Rajnath Singh become party president for the first time and this is how he has paid back. “Rajnath Singh is an opportunist,” she bitterly added. Singh’s defiance of the party has put the spotlight on Rajasthan politics. It has become a prestige issue not just in Rajasthan but is seen as a test case for the party’s fortunes nationally. The Barmer- Jaisalmer constituency has a substantial chunk of voters who belong to the Pir Pagaro sect across the border in Sindh. Singh’s popularity among this bloc of voters could swing the election here in his favour. Singh’s family is well rooted in the Barmer-Jaisalmer area where the BJP has given the ticket to an outsider, Sonaram Chaudhry, a Congress party defector. The force behind Singh’ ouster from the party is none other than the newly elected Rajasthan chief minister Ms Vasundhra Raje of the old princely family. But given the caste equations and his own standing, Singh is confident of teaching the BJP’s ruling clique a be-fitting lesson. ..................................................................................................