POLITICS UNITED FRONT

Bitter home truths
Home Minister Indrajit Gupta's antics leaves Deve Gowda all at sea

Homing in:
Indrajit Gupta was a
better leader of the
opposition than the
subdued Vajpayee. 		Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda must be rapping himself on the knuckles for ignoring his own better judgment on who should be his home minister. When he was busy forming the coalition government, Gowda’s true instinct was that he should keep the sensitive home portfolio with himself for the first six months at least.
Gowda’s close advisers had identified it along with six other portfolios as too sensitive and which would have an impact on the government’s overall functioning; where even an error of judgment can cause serious embarrassment for the government. (The others are finance, personnel, information and broadcasting, external affairs, law and justice).
Gowda kept home with him for the first four weeks and got intensive briefings from the ministry officials on the state of the country’s internal affairs.
The ministry dealt with law and order, terrorism, domestic intelligence, Centre-state relations, governors, states under President’s rule and a host of key issues affecting the polity and the people.
But when expansion time came, Gowda was under intense pressure to hand over the home portfolio to a senior coalition partner.The Left parties insisted that the right person would be CPI veteran Indrajit Gupta, the hero of many a battle in the Lok Sabha. But Gowda had no personal rapport with the communist veteran who has been a difficult customer even for Big Brother CPI(M).
Three years ago, Gupta demonstrated his independent streak when he refused to join the Congress and the CPI(M) in passing a law aimed at muzzling Chief Election Commissioner T.N. Seshan. Gowda would have preferred someone with a more flexible political attitude and somebody who would call him "Sir", rather than Gupta’s elderly "Mr Prime Minister" or "Mr Gowda".
However, senior bureaucrats in cabinet secretariat and the Prime Minister’s Office wanted Gowda to shed the home portfolio. Their arguments were different. They wanted a buffer in more than one way: the home minister should be able to filter and clarify issues before they went to the Prime Minister. And if things went wrong in government handling, the home minister would be a convenient sacrificial goat. Gowda bought this argument and with it serious trouble from his own home minister.
Gupta made his first fortnight in office memorable with his potshots at the government itself, at the Congress and its president P.V. Narasimha Rao and finally at Janata Dal president Laloo Prasad Yadav. He was a better leader of the opposition than the unusually subdued Atal Bihari Vajpayee and made Gowda lose whatever little sleep he was getting.
The taunts from the BJP and the Congress at Gupta were met with surprising silence from the United Front benches. When Gupta’s statements were challenged in the Lok Sabha, the only defender was fellow communist Somnath Chatterjee of the CPI(M). Chatterjee is all sweetness these days. Those who had seen him in the Tenth Lok Sabha would not forget the way the barrister from West Bengal had poured scorn on Rao. Now, though he and his party are outside the coalition government Chatterjee is more restrained than Gupta who is inside but prefers to speak the political home truths. Chatterjee stresses that it is everyone’s prime duty to see that the United Front government survives and thus keep the BJP away from power.
But Gupta, who has been an intense critic of the Congress ever since the CPI and Congress parted ways in 1976 after the onslaught on his party by Sanjay Gandhi, cannot push realities under the carpet of convenience. Thus mid-week saw him admitting electoral irregularities in the recent Kashmir elections, calling the Janata Dal-ruled Bihar government ineffective and saying that Rao has no business to continue as the Congress leader.
He decided that a host of political leaders, including his own cabinet colleague Mulayam Singh Yadav, can manage with less security from black cats and other coloured commandos. Gupta also made his displeasure known to friends when Gowda appointed Romesh Bhandari, a close associate of Rao, the Governor of Uttar Pradesh which is administered by Gupta’s ministry.

"Mr. Prime Minister": Deve Gowda would have preffered someone with a flexible attitude. 		If Gowda is irked that he is not shown deference by the home minister, the equally piqued home minister wonders why the Prime Minister bends over backwards to please the Congress and why he does not call the United Front’s steering committee. However, the CPI(M), which had a major campaign against Bhandari when he was Tripura Governor, has not shown public dissent and is advising restraint to Mulayam who is upset that his nominee was not made Governor.
Interestingly, the Prime Minister was not consulted on the home ministry decision to review and even scale down the security given to VVIPs--some are constituents of the United Front, others are outside supporters and some potential allies.
"The United Front seems to have implemented its principle of maximum autonomy in its functioning," was the caustic remark of Srivallabh Panigrahi, a vociferous Congress Lok Sabha member who had described the coalition as a "bundle of confusions and contradictions". He was referring to the promise of "maximum autonomy" for Jammu and Kashmir, promised in the common minimum programme.
But Gupta was not without supporters in the United Front. There is a sense of unease among major partners like the CPI(M), CPI, DMK and Telugu Desam over the excessive dependence on the Congress and its president. Both the Leftist trade unions--the CPI(M)-controlled CITU and the CPI-controlled AITUC--have time and again expressed their displeasure over the government’s policies, whether it was the tough austerity package of Finance Minister P. Chidambaram or the insistence of Labour Minister M. Arunachalam to go ahead with the controversial provident fund pension scheme. The unions had strongly opposed the pension scheme as "betrayal of the working class" when it had been brought by the Narasimha Rao government.
Similarly, Gupta’s protests over the hike in petroleum prices struck a sympathetic chord in the DMK, and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi in his first budget provided relief for LPG users, the same LPG users who were described as "elite class" by Gowda.
Again, Gupta’s strong remarks that Narasimha Rao could go to jail "today or tomorrow" and that he would find it difficult to continue as Congress president came as a Godsend for Rao loyalists to divert attention from the dissident campaign within the party. A harried Gowda immediately asked Gupta to tone down his outbursts, since he occupied the high office of the home minister. Gupta had shot back saying he was only stating the plain truth and there was nothing new in leaders of one party talking about the internal affairs of another.
Gowda then told leaders of constituent parties like Karunanidhi, Chandrababu Naidu, H.S. Surjeet and G.K. Moopanar that it would be difficult for him to function if cabinet ministers shot off their mouth. Gowda took the unusual step of announcing that he was "disturbed" by Gupta’s remarks. Only friendly advice from Somnath Chatterjee made Gupta say sorry to the Congress, but it was evident that he did not trust the Congress an inch. He insisted that the Congress was compelled to support the Front, while the Congress maintained that it was out of conviction.
The home ministry remained a problem area for Gowda, as he had to remove Gupta’s deputy Taslimuddin who has been arraigned in criminal charges; he had also made a strong statement that the idols in the disputed site at Ayodhya should be removed. While many United Front members felt that charges against Taslimuddin should be investigated, on Ayodhya they felt he was articulating the Muslim view. But Gowda found it better to sacrifice Taslimuddin, even at the risk of displeasing Laloo Yadav.
The coalition spoke in several tongues and even pulled in different directions because of Gowda’s own heavy workload. Gowda wanted to settle many pending issues in the government which meant that he did not want frequent meetings of the United Front steering committee. The apex body, in which heads of 13 parties are represented, is to meet regularly to ensure that there is cohesion in the front. But Gowda could hold just two meetings in his first six weeks. And in the second meeting smaller parties like the Forward Bloc, the Revolutionary Socialist Party, Karnataka Congress and United Goan Democratic Party were left out.
Gowda’s principal adviser is Civil Aviation Minister C.M. Ibrahim, who wants Gowda to improve the Dal’s performance in Jammu and Kashmir and Uttar Pradesh where elections are being held. Mulayam Singh, a major partner of the United Front, is miffed that Gowda and Ibrahim are directly dealing with the Bahujan Samaj Party for seats, which may leave his Samajwadi Party in the lurch, as the BSP has already tied up with the Congress, too.
Also worried is S. Bangarappa of Karnataka Congress Party whose is a one-member outfit in the front. He is already piqued that the CBI has carried out raids on his residence in connection with a corruption case, but Gowda made it clear that the case was being monitored by the CBI and he had nothing to do with the raids. The former Karnataka chief minister is also upset over Gowda’s role in the release of 5 tmc ft of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu--an issue on which DMK/TMC members from Tamil Nadu are at odds with Janata Dal members from Karnataka. But Gowda pointed out that in the previous Lok Sabha Congress members from both sides had shouted slogans against each other and this is an issue he can manage well.
THE contradictions are evident in Parliament. Old equations and positions no longer hold. If the CPI(M) has stopped criticising Rao, Janata Dal leaders Sharad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan, who castigated the Congress day in and out, have realised how vital the Congress support is.
Even the BJP has decided to keep up its attack, but wants to target specific ministers rather than issues. Not surprisingly their first targets are Muslim ministers--Taslimuddin, Maqbool Dar and C.M. Ibrahim. But the BJP’s special operations team led by president L.K. Advani, which was constituted this May to try and drum up support for the Vajpayee government, is now busy collecting unsavoury evidence against every member of the Gowda cabinet.
The BJP wants to use the route of public interest litigation as well as media coverage to target its victims. The reasoning is that if more and more ministers get discredited and are forced to resign, Gowda’s public image would suffer and it would be easier to remove him.
Though Gowda himself has been burning the midnight oil to gear up the government to meet the basic needs, he perhaps needs some time to set right the mess in his own home ministry. While it may become necessary for Indrajit Gupta to keep his tongue in check, Gowda has to convince Gupta that the United Front itself is taken into confidence before every major decision is taken. Otherwise the routine of Gupta saying something, Gowda denying it, and both doing things which others do not know, would continue. Loss of control over his home minister cost one Indian Prime Minister his job. That was Morarji Desai, whom Gowda admired very much. The home minister who embarrassed, troubled and finally toppled Morarji Desai was Charan Singh.
--SACHIDANANDA MURTHY
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