Gadkari makes a fool of himself
By Harihar Swarup
While the battle lines for coming assembly elections in five states have been drawn, polls in Uttar Pradesh are turning curious day by day. Chief Minister Mayawati is striving hard to put a clean image of her government by unceremoniously sacking tainted ministers of her cabinet, particularly Babu Singh Kushwaha and Badshah Singh. Kushwaha is alleged to have swindled the National Rural Health Mission of thousands crores of rupees and done many more unsavory things. A confidant of Mayawati, he is a powerful leader of OBCs and commands sizeable following in central UP.
Mayawati’s government is known to be most corrupt and she herself is not above board. If she looses elections, It may be because of rampant corruption in her government. Till yesterday, Kushwaha was close to her, her eyes and ears, may be sharing the loot with her but almost overnight he became corrupt and she summarily dismissed him. Why? Perhaps, Mayawati wants to refurbish her image and show to the voters that she could sack even her most trusted colleagues on corruption charges. Though a calculated move, this is a desperate attempt to improve her image which, one wonders, will succeed. On plus side, there is no denying the fact that she is an able ruler and knows how to deal with lumpen and anti-social elements. The law and order situation in U.P. has improved; it is certainly better than what it was in the tenure of Mulayam Singh Yadav. There was time when in Lucknow’s fashionable marketing complex—Hazratgung— chain snatching and petty crime were common. With an iron hand Mayawati put this type of crime in the state capital and other cities to an end. This, however, does not mean that U.P. has become crime free. In case of other Chief Ministers, UP’s powerful mafia controlled the CMs. The situation has reversed now; Mayawati controls the mafia. Let us have a look at the BJP—the other face of the main opposition—the party with a difference. The BJP has shown its most opportunistic face when it promptly admitted expelled Kushwaha in the party. The BJP’s attraction in the sacked minister lay in the fact that he belongs to the OBC which the party wants to woo in the coming elections Kushwaha came under a cloud of suspicion following murders of two chief medical officers. He was forced to quit the cabinet; corruption charges against him are serious indeed. But that has not deterred the BJP from taking him in the party or admitting BSP’s former Labour Minister, Badshah Singh, who was charged by the Lokayukta with land grabbing.
Eye brows were raised when Kushwaha and Badshah Singh were admitted in the BJP. Now the party chief Nitin Gadkari’s belief in realpolitik has come into conflict with the view of other leaders such as L K Advani and Sushma Swaraj. Evidently, Gadkari may have reckoned that inducting tainted Kushwaha, a member of OBC and Badshah Singh, a Thukar, would play well into caste-community electoral matrix of UP polls.
The past two years have been roller-coaster ride for the BJP, riding the morality plank. It the party steps off, it can be flung without direction; if it stays put, it risks infinite ridicule. The BJP’s own description of being an ardent supporter of Anna Hazare, duly communicated to him by Gadkari himself has become out of date. Well before that, and even before the 2G scam came to light, the BJP has resolve to attack UPA-2. The obstacle was its Karnataka Chief Minister, B S Yeddyurappa. So the party publicly declared that it would be getting rid of the Chief Minister in order to continue assault on the congress-led government. But this was not to be. Yeddyurappa stayed put. Corrupt or not, he was deemed a vote-catcher. When CM was finally replaced, it was because of the Lokayukta officially called him corrupt.
To improve its image the BJP tacked on to the Anna bandwagon, hoping to gain from this association and became a convert to Hazare’s Jan Lokpal. But the backlash came sooner than expected with the BJP falling for the bait of attracting allegedly super-corrupt politicians—such as Babu Singh Kushwaha, till recently a minister in Mayawati’s government—in the hope that this would get the party votes of OBC. Ironically, a lot of documentation against Kushwaha was brought to the attention of the CBI by no less a person than BJP National Secretary, Kirit Somaiya.
One wonders if Gadkari is becoming liability for the BJP but some of his quotable quotes are worth reproducing. They have become pertinent in the present context. While defending Yeddyurappa, he had noted that what the former CM had done was “unethical but not illegal”. In Kushwaha episode, he has reportedly said that the charges against former BSP minister are “not at all serious”. (IPA Service)