Mud-slinging season has begun

Either Steel Minister Beni Prasad Verma suffers from chronic foot-in-mouth disease or he is playing a deadly game only he and his cronies understand.

Once very close to Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh, he ditched him to join the Congress, and has a one-point agenda of bashing Mulayam.

First, Verma accused Mulayam of having close links with terrorists, then of taking money to support the UPA. The enraged SP leaders backed off only when Congress chief Sonia Gandhi apologised to Mulayam.

New political low

But Verma is not done yet; now, he has called SP “a finished force” in UP, and predicted it’ll win only four seats in the next Lok Sabha polls. SP leaders have returned the compliment calling Congress leaders cheats, and Verma a drug — charas and afeem , to be precise — addict!

You have to concede that for entertainment and reaching new lows in political discourse, Uttar Pradesh is in a class by itself.

The Varun saga

Remember Varun Gandhi’s hate speech before the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, which had embarrassed even the BJP itself? Of course, now Varun has been acquitted by the courts in both the cases on technical grounds of “insufficient evidence” and the failure to establish that the speech was made with the intent to promote communal hatred!

Varun had contended that his speech was edited by local channels to make it appear he was promoting communal hatred, so let’s have a recap. What we saw on TV channels was a highly-charged Varun promising to cut every hand — the Congress’s election symbol — that was raised against Hindus. He then jeered at the Muslim community for having “strange names like Karimullah and Mazharullah”, and sporting such long beards that can scare you in the night. His next gem: “When my little cousin sister saw the picture of a Muslim SP candidate in an election poster, she told me: I did not know that Osama bin Laden is contesting from your constituency.”

After the court verdict, Varun had assured the nation he’d continue working for a strong and united India. Good enough for the BJP to elevate its MP to General Secretary’s post. The joke on social media, after his elevation, was: “BJP ne Congress se kaha : Mere paas bhi Gandhi hai (The BJP told the Congress, we have a Gandhi too.)”

Ambitious Mulayam

Returning to Verma, who by comparison uses milder language, his constant bashing of Mulayam, whom the UPA desperately needs, is raising suspicion that he might soon join Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party. If Mayawati is using him to wreck the UPA’s house from within, she must be smarter than Mulayam, who is only threatening early elections.

Along with son Akhilesh, Mulayam has accused the UPA Government of misusing the CBI against political rivals. In a recent comedy of errors, the Government’s actions confirmed the charge of the Opposition parties, particularly the BJP, that it uses and misuses the CBI. Close on the heels of the DMK’s withdrawal of support to the UPA, the CBI raided DMK leader M. K. Stalin’s house over the issue of illegal import of cars.

A red-faced Government asked the CBI to back off, advancing the weak argument that though this raid was on 17 establishments, and Stalin’s house was only one of them, the “timing” was wrong and would be “misunderstood”. It was a classic case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Regional satraps like Mulayam and Mayawati, Nitish Kumar, Jayalalithaa, even Karunanidhi ( if the DMK manages to turn the tables on her in the Lok Sabha polls), Mamata and Naveen Patnaik will play a crucial role in the formation of the next government. It is interesting to note that in the choice of the next prime minister, many of these leaders are themselves aspirants for the top post — barring Karunanidhi, who is too old. But their dreams can be realised only if both the Congress and the BJP do badly, and if the SP can repeat its Assembly election performance; Mulayam is miles ahead in this race.

But the biggest obstacle between his dream of heading a Third Front government is a man called Narendra Modi, who has slowly, surely and systematically annihilated competition from within his own party. In public , Modi speaks only of Gujarat and smoothly deflects all talk of his being the BJP or NDA’s prime ministerial candidate with both ease and élan, saying a lifetime is not sufficient to take “my Gujarat” to the heights it deserves.

His induction into the BJP’s Parliamentary Board by BJP chief Rajnath Singh, who displayed a touching deference to Modi, is clear indication that other BJP leaders such as Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley will have to step aside. As for the third aspirant, very soon, the nation will be asking ‘Gadkari who?’ In politics, there is no place for losers, and some deft manoeuvring by Modi has ensured that Gadkari will soon be a forgotten chapter.

Battling from within

But Modi has several enemies from within the Parivar. As he was elevated in Delhi, in hometown Ahmedabad, at a VHP meet presided over by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, friend-turned-foe Pravin Togadia attacked Modi without naming him. “Anyone who embraces the minority community for vote bank politics” should be shunned, he thundered.

Responding to Bhagwat’s call for a Ram mandir, VHP’s Gujarat Chief Dilip Trivedi flayed those who “grabbed power using Ram mandir but are now busy propagating their own image and dreaming big for themselves”.

The same day, Atul Vaidya, a Bajrang Dal spokesman, complained bitterly about the plight of some poor, lower class Hindu youth in Ahmedabad who had been picked up by the police around Gulbarga Society and Naroda Patia in connection with the 2002 riots. “I don’t want to name any person but these youth were used and abused by people to achieve a purpose. Nobody bothers about their condition today; we feel cheated.”

Who is listening?

Anyway, in the coming days, the pitch for a Ram mandir and other Hindutva issues will be raised by those within the saffron brigade who scoff at Modi’s development mantra. How he handles these attacks will be interesting to watch. More exciting will be the deadly cocktail of Hindutva, development, anti-corruption sentiments, regional aspirations and several other issues that will make the coming election a sure cliffhanger.

Rasheeda.bhagat@thehindu.co.in and blfeedback@thehindu