The Hindu Business Line : Silent voters and worried politicians of M.P.

MATDATA chup-chap, neta pareshan (voters are silent, politicians are worried). Everything is quiet in the villages as people are carrying on with their day-to-day life." This is how the politically astute Mr Jagdish Yadav, who runs the post office in Bishankheda village, about 35km from Bhopal, from his little provision shop, sums up the trend in Madhya Pradesh elections.

He can bowl you totally with the kind of statistics he has of elections held even 25 years ago; the candidates, the margins, et al. This village comes under the Bhojpur constituency, which has been retained by the BJP even during the last two elections when the Congress(I) put up a creditable performance and formed the government. "Right from 1977, the BJP has won this seat. This time the BJP's sitting MLA, Mr Naresh Patel, has not got the ticket and Mr Surendra Patwa, the nephew of the BJP veteran leader and Lok Sabha MP, Mr Sundarlal Patwa, is contesting. This was once his uncle's seat and there is no way he can lose from here," says this avid BJP supporter. His devotion to the BJP is not surprising, but what is surprising is that as he takes potshots at the Digvijay Singh govenremnt's "misrule for 10 years" with a lot of pithy one-liners, enjoying his humour are Mr Mahendra Singh Yadav and his friend, Mr Raj Singh, both Congress(I) loyalists, who happen to be seated in his shop.

The Congress(I)'s problem, says Mr Yadav, is not that it has two groups fighting against each other, it has three. "And two of the groups which are against Mr Digvijay Singh, want to ensure that he doesn't become chief minister for the third time... then, they fear, he will become too big for his boots. This in a nutshell, is the Congress(I)'s problem." Cut back to the period when the candidates had been announced and the party's senior leader from MP, Mr Kamalnath, had said categorically that he had no hand in the selection of candidates, who were all selected by the Chief Minister.

Political analysts interpret this to say that Kamalnath has cleverly washed his hands off the election outcome right from now. With almost all opinion polls giving a clear majority to the BJP, if the Congress-I does lose, the onus will fall on Mr Digvijay Singh and him alone. Undoubtedly the BJP's workers and leaders alike are in a jubilant mood. And the party's campaign machinery is at its best in MP, the only State where the opinion polls have given BJP a green signal. Whether it is neta or abhineta, they have lined up the bigwigs right from the Prime Minister, Mr Vajpayee, the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr L.K. Advani, the party's Gujarat hero, Mr Narendra Modi, and others such as Ms Sushma Swaraj, Mr Rajnath Singh, and of course the suave and articulate Mr Arun Jaitley, who has been put in charge of planning and executing the Madhya Pradesh campaign.

The BJP's spectacular success in Gujarat, where also he was in charge, is still fresh in the party's memory. And he does provide a welcome relief from the BJP's chief ministerial candidate, Ms Uma Bharti's shrill and acerbic style of attacking her political opponents.

While Ms Hema Malini was the BJP's star campaigner in MP on Thursday, Mr Modi's rally in Bhopal on Wednesday evening attracted a massive response, leading a local journalist to say in amazement, "Even Vajpayee or Advani's rallies do not attract this kind of a crowd. This tells you a lot about the mindset of the people of Madhya Pradesh and why the opinion polls show a swing in favour of the BJP. The Hindutva magic which failed in Himachal and is bound to fail in Rajasthan, seems to be working here." But the Gujarat CM refrained from making communally coloured remarks, perhaps dreading a backlash from the EC, and confined the major part of his speech in damning both the Congress(I) chief, Ms Sonia Gandhi, and the State CM, Mr Digvijay Singh. Bragging about the way in which he had brought back the ashes of freedom fighter Shyamji Krishna Verma from Geneva, he challenged Singh to bring back Bhojshala's Saraswati idol from the London museum. "He can't do that but he can bring a Madam from Italy," he concluded scathingly, to cheers from the audience.

Returning to Ms Uma Bharti's poll lingo, Mr Kishanlal, a former sarpanch from a village near Hoshangabad, about 65 km. from Bhoapl, agrees that "Uma didi teekha zarur bolti hei, lekin woh dharm sey rajniti mei aayi hei, (she does speak harshly, but that is because she has come from the religious side to the political side) and her speech has not changed." But would such a style of speaking go down well with the voters? "Oh yes, why not? Actually, when she talks about Hindutva, the voters think that yeh tau sakhshat devi bol rahi hei (this is the real goddess speaking.) While Mr Jagdish Yadav does not approve of Ms Bharti's campaign lingo, he says that she should be made chief minister at least on one count. "Till now Madhya Pradesh has seen only the forward castes and classes occupying the CM's chair. She hails from the pichla varg (backward class) and her becoming a chief minister would spell a total departure from past norms. Let us give this class too a chance... I'm confident that she will provide a clean government."

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Silent voters and worried politicians of M.P.