It seemed there would be a veritable star war of sorts between Bharati and CM in UP elections, but 5 months later, Bharati seems to be taking a back seat.
BJP president Nitin Gadkari brought back rebel Uma Bharati into the party fold in June this year after a gap of over five years and presented her as the star campaigner in the Uttar Pradesh assembly poll campaign.
She was expelled from the party after a televised spat with top leader LK Advani at a party conference in 2005.
It seemed that there would be a veritable star war of sorts between Bharati and chief minister and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) Mayawati in the state elections.
Five months later, Bharati seems to be taking a back seat. Even as Advani has undertaken a nation-wide Jan Chetna Yatra against corruption, UP’s BJP stalwarts, former chief minister and former party president Rajnath Singh and Kalraj Mishra, have undertaken a ‘svabhimaan yatra’, which has set out from Kashi (Varanasi) and Mathura, and it will be culminating in Ayodhya. Bharati is missing in action.
Party vice-president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi mentioned the details of the ‘svabhimaan yatra’, in which leaders of opposition in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley respectively, and also Bihar deputy chef minister Sushil Modi are scheduled to take part.
Naqvi said the theme of the yatra of Singh and Mishra was the proclamation of ‘Ram rajya’ in contrast to BSP and its CM Mayawati’s corrupt regime. This was in itself a curiosity. The party that believes it has come on to the national stage of politics on the issue of Ram mandir in Ayodhya has gone, 20 years down the line, silent on the temple and speaking of Ram rajya which is taken to mean good governance.
It is interesting that there is strange silence on Uma Bharati’s role. Party spokesperson Prakash Javdekar, when asked what the role of Bharati is in the UP campaign, said she is the main campaigner. When reminded she was not playing a prominent role in the svabhimaan yatra, he just said she would lead the campaign.
Senior party leaders see Bharati as the face of one of prominent backward class communities, the Lodhs. Said one of them on condition of anonymity, “We need faces for each of the communities. For example, Kalyan Singh was the face of Lodhs once upon a time. Vinya Katiyar is a prominent leader from the Kurmi community.”
Another party leader when asked whether Bharati is an insider or outsider in UP - she had won the 2003 assembly election for the BJP in Madhya Pradesh and she hails from a place near Khajuraho - said the question of insider/outsider is not much of an issue in the Hindi heartland. He gave the example of Sushil Modi in Bihar.
Bharati’s return was a lukewarm affair in the upper echelons of the party, where there is fierce jostling for the top slot, that is the party’s prime ministerial claimant. At the moment, it is only Advani who is considered a contender for the prime minister’s post though he has himself denied it and the others are quite coy in taking a position.
Though Bharati is not in this race to the top, her presence does not seem to make things any easier for the party that is struggling to find its place and voice. It is not a surprise then that Bharati seems to biding her time, away from the party arclights.
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