NATIONAL POLITICS

Janata Dal: Dilemma Between Mulayam Singh Yadav and Kanshi Ram

Krishna Ananth in The Hindu, 21 January, 1996

Lok Sabha, the party witnessed its floor leader-Mr. V.P. Singh-quitting his membership of the House. While a recap of these developments would suffice to describe the state of the Janata Dal, the present round of internal wranglings appear to have surpassed all standards set by the Lohiaite tradition of party organization. The tradition of individual preferences, rather than ideological positions, set the agenda for fission and fusion in the party. In a sense, a discussion on the Janata Dal affairs will be impossible if one seeks to explain the differences in terms of issues.

The current differences in the party on the question of identifying an alliance partner in Uttar Pradesh is essentially a battle between Mr. Sharad Yadav, on the one side, and Mr. Ram Vilas Paswan, on the other. However, the two rivals are one in conveying the real message that the Dal is a virtual non-entity in Uttar Pradesh today; a State where the Dal had managed to keep the Congress(I) and the BJP at bay even when it was engaged in a triangular battle in 1989.

Similarly, at the height of the 'Ram' wave in 1991, Uttar Pradesh returned as many as 22 Janata Dal MPs to the Lok Sabha.

It is indeed reflective of the crisis in the ranks that the Janata Dal is now left with a mere half-a-dozen MPs after a large number of them had left the party with Mr. Ajit Singh to join the Congress(1). Some others had joined Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav.

In fact, the Dal's hold in Uttar Pradesh started eroding from 1991 and Mr. Mulayam Singh emerged as the inheritor of the Socialist legacy in the State in November 1993. By striking an alliance with Mr. Kanshi Ram and dismissing the Janata Dal as a "press conference party restricted to Delhi." Mr. Yadav had rallied the minorities and the backward classes behind him.

Though the Janata Dal had still managed a 10 per cent plus popular votes in the Assembly elections in November 1993, the fact that this was not reflected in the number of seats that the Dal managed in the Assembly led to a steady exodus of the local leaders of the Janata Dal to Mr. Mulayam Singh's fold. The singular factor that had led to this exodus was the announcement of Mr. V.P. Singh that he would keep away from active party politics.

Mr. V.P. Singh's decision has triggered the current round of disputes in the Dai and it is incidental that the theatre of dispute is Uttar Pradesh. implicit is an admission among the leaders that the party is at best a marginal force in what had been the Dal's bastion in 1989.

In fact, the debate is not on choosing between Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mr. Kanshi Ram... Mr. Sharad Yadav's penchant for keeping the BSP option open is essentially a part of his camp's strategy to keep a check on Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav.

 After having been reduced to a virtual non-entity in the State, the Sharad Yadav camp - which to an extent has the blessings of Mr. Laloo Prasad Yadav - is keen on having Mr. Kanshi Ram to play the role of a watchman on Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav. As for the Paswan camp - blessed by another Janata Dal Chief Minister, Mr. Deve Gowda - there is no way that Mr. Mulayam Singh's claim to Uttar Pradesh could be disputed.

 While in the case of Mr. Deve Gowda the "love" for Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav could be traced to their mutual "friendship" dating back to "the good old days" when they revolted against Mr. V.P. Singh's leadership in November 1990 under Mr. Chandra Shekhar's leadership, the case of Mr. Ram Vilas Paswan is different.

 Having founded and nurtured the Dalit Sena, which Mr. Paswan had been putting into effective use to keep him in good stead in the Janata Dal, any alliance with the Kanshi Ram-Mayawati duo in Uttar Pradesh would mean that his efforts at dalit consolidation in Uttar Pradesh and other northern States would go waste. It is this personal preference that Mr. Paswan managed to sugarcoat with the BSP's "opportunistic" alliance with the BJP.

 It was in this context that the Janata Dal leadership decided two months ago to initiate talks with Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav's party for seat adjustments in Uttar Pradesh. Interestingly, this decision was taken after Mr.V.P. Singh, the "reluctant leader", intervened

 Though Mr. Singh had been stressing he need to keep the BSP option open ever since the SP-BSP alliance broke up in Lucknow, his sudden preference for the Samajwadi Party raised many eyebrows within and outside the party.

 All these, however, did not settle the muddled waters in the Janata Dal and the Sharad Yadav camp is persisting with its demand that the BSP option should not be closed even if it is at the cost of the Samajwadi Party and in this he finds support from among a majority of the party leaders still left in the Janata Dal in Uttar Pradesh.

 The tussle in the Janata Dal, primarily caused by personality clashes, is showing all signs of becoming a street brawl with the rival camps unhesitatingly using the press to level charges and countercharges against each other.

 Ram Rao's demise has thrown the Dal into a fresh crisis. The party will now have to go through the task of embarking upon the task of constituting the Front.