BJP debacle: Jaswant wants blame to be fixed

NEW DELHI: As it licks the wounds of ahumiliating defeat in the Lok Sabha polls, BJP has been wracked by viciousfactional feuding that threatens to embroil the party into a full-blown civilwar even before the year-end. The opening shots in what may turn outto be an open-ended conflagration have already been fired by leaders likeJaswant Singh and Yashwant Sinha who are pressing for responsibility for thedebacle to be fixed. Though couched in concern for the party, their salvos havebeen seen as aimed against party general secretary Arun Jaitley who was incharge of the poll campaign, and, perhaps to a lesser degree, L K Advani.Jaswant circulated a note at the meeting of the party's corecommittee on Wednesday, purportedly designed to question Jaitley's elevation asLeader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha and Advani persevering as Leader ofOpposition in Lok Sabha. "Shouldn't be there a correlation between performanceand reward," Jaswant asked. According to those familiar with thecontents of the note, the veteran, who is going to be without a post despitehaving won the Lok Sabha poll from Darjeeling, hit out at Jaitley and SudheendraKulkarni, Advani's close aide, for analysing the factors behind the defeat inmedia. "Does this right belong only to those involved with poll management," heasked. Though he was persuaded by colleagues to take back his note,the attack confirmed fears that the party was headed for prolonged infighting.The party may be staring at a long spell of adverse publicitystarting with the meeting of its national executive begining here on June 21. Asa matter of fact, the veiled attacks may pale into insignificance when afull-scale battle is joined in the open for who leads the organisation after theterm of incumbent Rajnath Singh expires in December. A stock takingof the defeat ��� which the leadership has been fighting shy of and whichcan now become an open season for settling scores ��� may be the spark.Few are surprised by the goings on. Since its shock defeat in 2004,the party has increasingly looked an agglomerate of factions whose compositionkeeps altering according to the interests of ambitious individuals who make forthe so-called central leadership. The situation has worsened as Advani ���the only one after A B Vajpayee to command respect across most of the factions��� fades out. The authority of RSS as the ultimate arbiter has declinedwith the consequence that fights continue indefinitely, reducing the party to amaelstrom of competing aspirations which can fuse for a common end only to driftapart. Jaswant's attack may have been trained at Jaitley andKulkarni but it must have brought happiness also to those like Murli ManoharJoshi who hoped to succeed Advani as Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, and aredismayed because the latter was persuaded to stay on. Significantly, there islittle common between the Darjeeling MP and Joshi. Likewise, whileJoshi and Rajnath have always been at odds, the discomfiture to common rivals,Advani and Jaitley, can lead to strategic convergence. The motiveswhich led Jaswant to launch the attack are a matter of serious debate. But manywould agree with the sarcastic comment in his purported note that the party waswitnessing a game with no rules where people use and discard `ideological'causes to further their personal agenda.