Vadra off the hook, Haryana shows the way

VIEWPOINT
AMITABH SHUKLA

As expected, Haryana government has given a clean chit to Robert Vadra and his companies and absolved the son-in-law of Congress President Sonia Gandhi of any wrongdoing in the land deals in the NCR region of the state where real estate agents are making a killing due to booming prices.

What else was the state Congress government and its Deputy Commissioners in Haryana expected to do? Find Vadra guilty of acts of omission and commission? No one would have expected the state government and its officials to behave differently. DCs are relatively junior officers in the hierarchy of IAS and those of the four districts of Gurgaon, Faridabad, Mewat and Palwal, who gave a clean chit to Vadra, know this well. The example of whistle-blower and their senior colleague in the IAS, Ashok Khemka who was transferred the moment he ordered a probe into the deals of Vadra, was too recent for any official to forget. 

Common sense says that a state Congress government can never go against the top boss of the party and her family, come what may. This has never happened in the past. You do not find faults with your benefactor or his immediate family unless you have gone astray and want to commit a political suicide.

Bhupinder Singh Hooda was made the chief minister of the state eight years ago overlooking the claims of Bhajan Lal. He has been in the good books of the Gandhi family ever since and despite a poor performance of the party in the 2009 assembly polls where the Congress failed to get a simple majority, he was entrusted with the top job as he was the only leader who could have won the independents and effected a split in the Haryana Janhit Congress, the party of Bhajan Lal.

Being a smart business man, Vadra simply bought land in the NCR region of Haryana at throwaway prices, sold them and made a killing after 2005 when Hooda government was firmly in the saddle. Any other businessman would have done the same if there is responsive and helpful administration and a government which bends to become accommodative. Obviously Vadra would not leave any trail of any wrongdoing as the land was bought above the Collector or the Circle rate. Proving quid pro quo is next to impossible as there would never be any paper or electronic trail for these. Remember, those who want to evade the dragnet of Income tax or other punitive laws are very meticulous in their paperwork and it requires a lot of investigation to find fault in their papers. Vadra is no exception.

Public opinion may crucify Vadra and the Congress leaders in the state and the Centre but in any case, no one is bothered about the public opinion any longer. Political leaders, cutting across party lines, have a simple theory – public memory is very short. Ask any person on the street about the land deals of Vadra and they will tell you that it reeks of corrupt practices. They will tell you that even if the land was bought above the collector rate or the circle rate, the price on which it was bought was extremely cheap and the price on which it was sold was extremely high. Any person owning any property in the country knows that the circle rate is in some cases only one tenth of the market price and in most cases, it is one fourth of the rate it commands in the market.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh says that money does not grow on trees. We agree. It grows on land instead. This perhaps explains the astronomical difference between the purchase price and the selling price of land in the case of Vadra.  After the end of the license permit and inspector raj, it is the natural resources which have become the biggest money spinners for those in power. Change in land use has become such an effective financial weapon in the hands of the state governments that no longer do they require any other mechanism to make gains or oblige someone with windfall gain.

BJP President Nitin Gadkari too finds himself in the same league. He is facing charges of irregularities in his companies and predictably the Congress is quick to attack him and defend Vadra in the same vein. Ask the aam aadmi (common man) on the streets and they would say that the defence of Gadkari is very weak. More so, when you stand on a high moral pedestal and accuse others, there should not be even a semblance of doubt on you. Caesar’s wife should be above suspicion. But this is obviously not happening. Two wrongs cannot make a right. Investigate both thoroughly.

But here comes the relevant question. Is there any impartial investigating agency in the country?  Which agency in the country would be fair to both Vadra and Gadkari at the same time without any bias if entrusted the task of investigation? CBI may or may not be good in investigating criminal cases but its record in dealing with the politicians has been abysmal and questioned time and again. Has it ever been able to get a conviction for a politician in numerous cases it has lodged against the likes of Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mayawati, Lalu Prasad Yadav and several others? Aren’t those cases dead like a dodo and revived only when politics necessitates it? Or has it ever lodged a case against a politician of the ruling party in the Centre in recent years?  Remember, it lodged a series of cases against Jagan Mohan Reddy in Andhra Pradesh only when he left the party and posed a direct threat and not when he was a Congress MP or his father YSR Reddy was the chief minister of the state.

So at the end of the day, the debate rests there. BJP will shout against the irregularities committed by Vadra while the Congress will point out that those by Gadkari are much serious in nature than that of Vadra. Public discourse will never move beyond that. At best, agencies could investigate Gadkari and come out with selective leaks to keep alive the issue politically. The entire political discourse has become too predictable in the recent past.

At one end of the political spectrum you have Vadra and Gadkari and the other end Virbhadra Singh who is shouting at the top of his voice that he is not corrupt, innocent and has been framed. Wasn’t it time that the Parliament passed the Lok Pal Bill so that this cacophony came to an end. (October 29, 2012) 

http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/dehradun/104961-vadra-off-the-hook-haryana-shows-the-way.html

http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/chandigarh/104946-vadra-off-the-hook-haryana-shows-the-way.html

False start and finish for Congress

  

VIEWPOINT  

AMITABH SHUKLA

AICC General Secretary Rahul Gandhi made two separate visits to Punjab within a span of a few days to find out the reasons for the defeat of the Congress in the Assembly polls earlier this year. He, however, desisted from visiting poll bound Himachal Pradesh where the party is battling it out and sweating profusely to pose a challenge to the ruling party.

What is baffling here is the obsession of the Congress with the past rather than the present or the future. Punjab could have easily waited. The postmortem could have been done even after November 4 when Himachal Pradesh goes to polls. The time he spent in Punjab could  have been spent in the hill state to motivate the moribund party workers who are out on the streets only now when barely a few days are left  for the polls which could well shape the political course of events in the run up to the general elections of 2014.

The question is why does Punjab interest Gandhi more than Himachal Pradesh? Is he afraid of electoral politics of which he is very much a part of and instead wants to concentrate on backroom operations of the party? Does he want to take the bulls by horn or simply wait for things to happen on its own? My suspicion is that after burning his fingers badly in Uttar Pradesh this year, he does not want to be the key figure and mascot of the party in the poll bound Himachal Pradesh. His lack of focus on Gujarat is understandable as Narendra Modi has managed to decimate the Congress effectively and the writing is very much on the wall. But Himachal is a border line case where a little extra effort from the Congress could have turned the tide and still everything is not lost. Remember, in the last over two decades, the state has voted against the incumbent governments. 

It is here that the Congress has bungled badly. Instead of focusing on the issue in hand and take an aggressive lead over its rivals in Himachal and Gujarat first by building the momentum and then by intensive campaigning, it is merely waiting for things to happen. What happened to the paper tigers of Congress like Digvijay Singh who sit in Delhi and issue one statement after the other, instead of getting into the nitty-gritty of electoral politics. Digvijay has washed his hands off Madhya Pradesh, his home state, after presiding over the defeat of the party and shifted base to Delhi, the easy option available to him.

Digvijay is not alone. There are scores of leaders in Congress, some of them Cabinet Ministers for whom getting into electoral politics is the last option and only if the party leadership pushes them towards it. Obviously Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is in this group and an inspiration for many that even without an electoral base, you can rise to the top. 

These leaders are cocooned in the Rajya Sabha, far away from the dust and grind of electoral politics and far away from the grassroots and ground realities. The problem is that the number of such leaders is only increasing and the party is hard pressed to find a popular leader in any state who could turn the tide for the party on his or her own accord.

I fail to understand why does Congress patronize leaders who  are neither good in back room operations nor can count any support base in any constituency of the country. In any case, you can’t have dozens of back room operators and no regional leader with charisma. Why don’t they come to the battlefield and focus on the job in hand – victory of the party in assembly polls rather than be comfortable in their offices and homes in New Delhi and issue one statement after the other.

Rahul may address a couple of meetings half heartedly in Himachal and Gujarat just to go through the motions. But so far, he has desisted from taking any initiative or plan a campaign which could give the party an edge in the polls bound states. Even at the AICC level, there seem to no planning at all to win Himachal and Gujarat. It is like the party has written off the two states from its scheme of things.

Perhaps YSR Reddy of Andhra Pradesh was the last regional leader of the Congress who could count on state-wide support and had an independent identity as a mass leader. You take any state of the country and would be hard pressed to find a leader who can claim a mass base. Take Maharashtra, Prithviraj Chavan has never been a state leader and was sent as chief minister from Delhi. The last leader with some mass base, Vilasrao Deshmukh, died early this year, leaving the party to the whims and fancy of NCP’s Sharad Pawar.

In states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, where Congress has been out of power for over two decades, you cannot even name a single leader who has any significant following. In West Bengal, Congress handed the state on a platter to Mamata Banerjee and the only leader with some standing, Pranab Mukherjee is in Rashtrapati Bhawan. In Gujarat, the party toyed with the likes of Shankarsinh Vaghela and today, hardly has anyone who can take on Narendra Modi. In Madhya Pradesh, after Digvijay Singh left, there is a complete vacuum in leadership. In Chhatisgarh, Ajit Jogi is there but has been discredited over a period of time. In Karnataka, the party seems to be in a good position due to the acts of omission and commission of the BJP government but is looking at 10 Janpath to send a leader to lead the party.

In Haryana, Bhupinder Singh Hooda has been there as CM for last 8 years and is losing relevance with every passing day with a series of scams in land dealings and the involvement of his ministers in criminal activities. In Punjab, there is hardly anyone beyond Capt Amarinder Singh and he too is now out of tune with the aspirations of the people of the state. In Himachal Pradesh, Virbhadra Singh was brought in even as he was facing a series of corruption cases simply because the Congress in the state was staring at a leadership crisis. In Delhi, Sheila Dikshit has been there and one of the longest serving chief ministers of the party but now wants to move away. In Uttarakhand, it is too early to comment on chief minister Vijay Bahuguna as he has hardly held any public office before.

If you make a false start, you are bound to finish last. The sooner the Congress realizes it, the better it would be for the party. (October 22, 2012) 

http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/chandigarh/103453-false-start-and-finish-for-congress.html

http://dailypioneer.com/state-editions/dehradun/103467-false-start-and-finish-for-congress.html

Tehri and Jangipur: Ominous signs for Cong, UPA

VIEWPOINT

AMITABH SHUKLA 

The warning bells are loud and clear. The results of the bye-elections for the Tehri and the Jangipur Lok Sabha seats suggest a countrywide trend, an undercurrent against the policies of the UPA Government and also against a series of acts of omission and commission, sending the Congress scurrying for cover.

If Congress does not read the ominous signs and take corrective measures in the next year and half, the writing is there on the wall. But the problem is that the grand old party cannot or rather does not want to hear the warning bells, does not want to look at the mirror and do some serious introspection. Medication starts only when the patient agrees with the diagnosis but here Congress wants to kill the doctor who diagnosed the disease. It wants to shoot the messenger even as the message is too obvious for everyone to see.

The mood clearly is something like 1989 when the Bofors issue brought down the mighty Rajiv Gandhi Government and before that in 1977 when imposition of the Emergency led to the crystallisation of the anti-Congress forces on one platform leading to the ouster of Congress for the first time.

In Uttarakhand, Tehri by-poll result is not a defeat for the Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna but clearly a no confidence vote against the UPA Government. The seat may have been vacated by Bahuguna and he may have led from the front to ensure the victory of his son Saket, but the series of expose ever since the UPA came to power in 2009, did him in. What makes the matters worse is that almost every single day one or the other corruption charges against Congress Ministers is being made.

Even as the din over the Coalgate and charges against Robert Vadra had yet to die down, there was charge against Law Minister Salman Khurshid about financial impropriety in the family run trust which received money from the Central Government. This was followed by charges against Virbhadra Singh when he was the Union Steel Minister on receiving kickbacks and alleged involvement in the selling of iron scrap. Remember, the same Virbhadra Singh had to resign from the Manmohan Singh Cabinet when a court in Shimla framed charges against him in the CD case. So it is a hat-trick of charges against Singh.

What has made the matters worse is the perception amongst the people that the party is extremely tolerant to corruption. The same Virbhadra is the Chief Ministerial candidate of the party in poll bound Himachal Pradesh, after being made the PCC chief two months before the elections. The message has gone not only in Himachal Pradesh but also rest of the country that come what may, the party will not take action against any tainted leader and instead would reward them with the position they want. Virbhadra wanted to become the PCC chief before elections so that he can get tickets for maximum of his supporters and he got what he wanted.

Political discourse has been reduced to such a comical level that instead of being on the defensive, Singh has been charging his political opponents of corruption and bragging that such issues do not affect the people and their voting preferences. Congress party is full of lawyers, including many in the Cabinet, but I don’t know how many of them would buy the argument which Virbhadra is placing in his defence. The tainted Himachal leader claims that he uses the initials “VS” and not “VBS” as mentioned in the diaries seized by the IT Department from Ispat Industries in which there is an entry of a payment of Rs2.28 crore to one “VBS”.

The result of Tehri indicates towards the malaise which has set in the 127-year-old party. Jangipur in West Bengal only confirmed it. The seat was vacated by Pranab Mukherjee after being elected as the first President of the country from West Bengal. His son, Abhijit Mukherjee just managed to win by a slender margin of over 2,500 votes while the margin of his father was 1.28 lakh votes. Abhijit knows that the next election which he will fight from the seat is not far away and just a year and half from now and the situation would only become difficult the way erosion of votes from the Congress has taken place. I hope Congress does not argue that the people of Jangipur are ungrateful and should have voted for the son of the first citizen of the country in the name of “Bengali honour”.

The erosion of the vote base of the Congress did not start all of a sudden. A series of high profile cases saw the involvement of several Congress leaders in scams. The big ticket scams started with the Commonwealth Games which led party MP Suresh Kalmadi to Tihar Jail in New Delhi. The investigation into the Games scam has come to a halt now. People are still wondering if Kalmadi did it all alone and wasn’t helped by the Delhi Government at all. A little earlier, the Madhu Koda scam broke out in which the party made an Independent MLA as Chief Minister of mineral rich Jharkhand, reaped the benefits and then left Koda high and dry in jail.

Then came the 2G scam which saw Cabinet Minister A Raja in jail and egg on the faces of several others, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, under whose nose the entire scam was carried out. If the corruption cases were not enough, inept handling of Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev made the Government unpopular and exposed its ability to handle sensitive issues administratively.

Coalgate was next and no one knows where the investigations will stop if done in a free and fair manner. Robert Vadra was the bombshell which was waiting to explode. However, hard the Cabinet Ministers and the party spokespersons tried in television studios, the hollowness of their claims was there before the entire country to see. They were defending the indefensible. No one will give me or any common citizen (mango people of banana republic), an overdraft or unsecured loan of even Rs100 what to talk of lakhs or crores. This is only the second time when the first family of the Congress has faced charges, the first was against Rajiv Gandhi in the Bofors case.

In between, there was the Adarsh society scam in Mumbai and several small scams. Now you have the Salman Khurshid and Virbhadra Singh episodes. There are many more happening which could come to limelight anytime now. Selling natural resources and change in land use have become tickets to wealth for many, those in the Congress have mastered it while those in other parties are learning the tricks fast.

Given the sentiments, reflected through Tehri and Jangipur, it is for the opposition parties to cash it. BJP wants to be voted to power through default and not through aggressive campaign. Remember, the Vadra issue was brought in public domain by Arvind Kejriwal and the 2G and Coalgate scams by the CAG. Congress may be in a self annihilation drive right now but if the principal opposition party does not take proactive  political measures and builds a confederation of regional parties around it, the scam tainted UPA could bounce back. (October 15, 2012)  

http://dailypioneer.com/state-editions/chandigarh/101629-tehri-and-jangipur-ominous-signs-for-cong-upa.html

http://dailypioneer.com/state-editions/dehradun/101633-tehri-and-jangipur-ominous-signs-for-cong-upa.html 

More evasive than forthcoming

Rahul Gandhi skirts major issues, talks of unemployment, drug addiction 

Amitabh Shukla / Chandigarh

The Yuvraj, Rahul Gandhi, lived upto expectations. Like a crown prince, he came with all the paraphernalia of royalty, waived at the Panjab University students, entered into a monologue and evaded the burning issues which the country and the youth face, then shook hands with some of the students and went away.

While some students thought they were meeting the rock star of Indian politics with a four-day old stubble, others thought they were face to face with the brother-in-law of Robert Vadra, facing a series of charges due to his association with reality major DLF. Very few amongst the 1000 odd students in the Panjab University campus here on Thursday thought they were listening to AICC General Secretary of the Congress and the future leader and Prime Minister of the country as the Congress would like to put it. 

Supposed to be the Students Convention of National Students Union of India in which the students were expecting Gandhi to take up questions haunting the country, the “youth icon” of the Congress simply gave a lecture to the students, pointed out how Punjab government was not doing its job on employment front and was indifferent to solving the menace of drug addiction.

The students had prepared well to ask blunt questions on the stand of Gandhi on issues ranging from the 2G scam to Coalgate and the latest Vadra episode. They remained disappointed – these are issues which the party would continue to evade rather than face them.

“I met ambassadors of European countries two days ago in Delhi. They were talking about the economic difficulties of European countries and the United States and how countries like China and India are progressing… Saudi Arabia was the reservoir of petroleum and wealth in the last century, India is the reservoir of youth and human resources,” the 42-year old Gandhi said.

The AICC General Secretary, who is set for a “bigger role” in politics, again repeated how he democratized the functioning of the NSUI and Indian Youth Congress through internal elections. He did not mention that even in these elections, the sons and daughters of Congress leaders won – Punjab and Haryana being no exception.

Gandhi borrowed from the speech of one of the youth leaders on the stage who said that 7 out of 10 youth in Punjab is in the grip of drugs and also touched the issue of unemployment without mentioning what the party would do to get the state rid of the twin issues of drug abuse and unemployment. He also alleged that the money sent by the Centre for scholarships to the students was being sent back by Punjab repeatedly without utilising it.

The only topical issue on which Gandhi spoke was FDI. “Do you know what FDI means? The meaning is simple…More money to the farmers”. The Congress leader did not speak on any other benefit which FDI is supposed to bring for the country.  He took on the BJP alleging that when the party was in power, it was not against FDI but was now against it. “They (BJP) are also against MGNREGA…They want to obstruct but we will not stop,” Gandhi continued, unmindful of the fact that NDA Chairman L K Advani praised the effort in the United Nations a day ago saying it has helped empower rural people and revive economic growth.

Enthused by the presence of a large number of female students in the crowd, Gandhi tried to keep them in good humour. “After 10-15 years, Punjab would have a woman chief minister,” he said, amid much applause from the girls present. Gandhi, nevertheless, forgot to mention that Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, a woman, was the chief minister of the state a decade and a half ago and is still active in politics though she was not present on the dais.

Ironically, even as the crowd largely comprised of female students, there was none present on the dais nor was any female student leader allowed to felicitate the leaders on the dais which included PCC chief Captain Amarinder Singh, CLP leader Sunil Jakhar, AICC in-charge of the state Gulchain Charak, NSUI President Rohit Chaudhary and several other male student leaders. (October 12, 2012) 

http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/chandigarh/101095-more-evasive-than-forthcoming.html

The litmus test of Himachal and Gujarat

  

VIEWPOINT 

AMITABH SHUKLA

The assembly elections of Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat juxtaposed against economic reforms and fresh charges of corruption going right to the doors of the first family of the Congress has set the political ball rolling which will stop only after the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

Himachal Pradesh, not far away from Delhi, would be the laboratory where the so called reforms like FDI in retail, increase in diesel prices and removal of subsidy from LPG cylinders would be tested electorally on November 4. Undoubtedly, along with these, fresh corruption charges like the Coalgate and now the Robert Vadra episode would also be on the platter of the Himachal Pradesh voters. Then there would be a cocktail of local issues like the court case against Virbhadra Singh’s corruption and the party lying dormant till three months ago. If the people still vote for Congress and bring it to power, then this would be the springboard which the UPA will use to get the right momentum in the run up to the general elections.    

Gujarat is quite far away from Delhi but the national issues would be there along with the local ones. Communal polarization is a thing of the past unless Congress tries to bring the issue again in campaigning and give Narendra Modi a clear cut advantage. Congress has been out of power in the state for too long now and even if there is a slightest hint of so called secular versus communal divide, disaster wouldn’t be too far away.

Given the situation and the stranglehold of Modi in the state in every parameter, even the die-hard Congress supporter would have little to expect from the state which the party also has sort of written off from its political agenda. Sonia Gandhi may have begun her campaign in the state but making the voters believe that whatever development took place in the state in the last decade or so has been due to funds from the Centre, is indeed a Herculean task.

My suspicion is that even if Congress loses both Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat, it will keep blowing the trumpet of righteousness – it did nothing wrong and 2G and Coalgate are merely the figment of imagination of the opposition and the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. It will keep insisting that assembly elections cannot be a referendum on the performance of Manmohan Singh government and cannot be seen as an indictment on the series of corruption charges the government is facing – right from the Commonwealth Games scam to the dealings of Vadra with the reality major DLF.

Earlier this year, elections were held for the Punjab and Uttarakhand assembly – states where Congress was expected to come back to power due to anti-incumbency against the ruling parties. It failed miserably in Punjab where the Akali Dal-BJP combine broke the tradition of incumbent government losing the polls. In Uttarakhand, it just scraped through and was far away from a comfortable victory. Colgate scam had not broken then nor had the revelations about Vadra come out in public domain the way it has now.

 In the hill state of Himachal, which has not returned an incumbent government for the last over two decades, Congress faces the burden of winning a poll in which its hands have been tied. While it has the advantage of history and anti-incumbency going for it, the list of disadvantages is pretty long and this has bogged down the party so much so that its campaign is yet to begin.

For four and a half years, Congress had given a walkover to the ruling BJP, seldom protesting against anything, even for the sake of it. The leaders were cocooned to the comfort of their houses and it was only when the elections got closer that the party changed the PCC President and brought in Virbhadra Singh, who many say has outlived his utility. The 78-year old Singh was made the General of an army which has no arms and ammunition. He was made the party chief amid much drama when half the leaders of Himachal Congress camped in Delhi for days when Prem Kumar Dhumal was consolidating his position by announcing one sop after the other for almost every section of the state.

Himself facing corruption charges in a court of law, Virbhadra is attacking chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal on corruption, an argument he is unlikely to win. It is like a pot calling the kettle black and however hard Congress tries to force the issue, it is only likely to boomerang. More so, when the party is facing a series of charges at the national level. So making corruption an issue in the Himachal polls has already proved to be a disadvantage for the party. “The party has made a false start,” summed up a veteran of state politics.

You cannot hope to do in 28 days what you could not in four years and ten months. People are not going to hand you the state on a platter just for the sake of anti-incumbency. A party has to work for it and it was here that the Congress failed to play the role of an active and effective opposition.

In neighbouring Punjab, Congress took the voters for granted, lost a crucial election and now is on the verge of disintegration - losing its leaders and cadres every day with some former MLA or Block level leader joining the ruling alliance. The grand old party has failed to live life as an opposition as it is used to the trappings of power. Congress leaders in Punjab know that the next election is four and a half years away and they need to have crumbs of power through the Akali Dal-BJP government.

Himachal Pradesh is moving the way Punjab did six months ago. Congress refuses to learn its lessons and change as per the expectations of the voters, who are getting younger, have different set of expectations than their fathers and are no more content with merely slogans and posturing. (October 8, 2012) 

http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/chandigarh/100067-the-litmus-test-of-himachal-and-gujarat.html 

http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/dehradun/100030-the-litmus-test-of-himachal-and-gujarat.html

Kaun Banega PM — key lies with ‘lifelines’

VIEWPOINT

AMITABH SHUKLA

Om Prakash Chautala is a regional chieftain. He is hardly known outside Haryana nor is his party Indian National Lok Dal.

Neither in the NDA nor in the UPA, he is desperate to float something called “Third Front” and wants Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal as the next Prime Minister of the country after the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

So Badal, the veteran of Akali politics, who has hardly played any political role at the Centre, becomes the latest name to join the race for prime ministership. Being an astute politician, firmly rooted to the ground, Badal knows the political reality of the country and may not himself be aspiring for the position, but his friend Chautala has nevertheless floated his name.

Chautala may not be serious unlike his father Chaudhary Devi Lal, who was one of the architects of the Third Front and rose to become the Deputy Prime Minister of the country in 1989. Badal is firmly in the NDA, one of its oldest constituents and has shown no inclination to leave it. At this point of time, the Third Front seems more like a mathematical calculation in the cloud rather than a political reality on the ground.

Badal’s name is the latest addition to a dozen odd names being floated like a test balloon. Those who float the names simply want to see the public reaction or lack of it before making a hasty retreat.

It all started with the floating of the name of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi for the top political job of the country. The moment the name of Modi is floated, media rushes to get the reaction of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. This has happened so often in the last couple of years that people have lost interest in the Modi versus Kumar shadow boxing. In fact, both the leaders themselves have now refused to get drawn into the slanging match, orchestrated by a section of the media.

Having won two consecutive elections in Bihar,  Nitish Kumar wrote the political obituary of Lalu Prasad Yadav and now he himself is an aspirant for the top job if the “situation warrants” and NDA looks for acceptability cutting across the political spectrum. His die-hard supporters insist that he could become the Prime Minister as the “most accepted” face of the NDA with all the regional satraps like Naveen  Patnaik in Odisha, Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal, Jayalalita in Tamil Nadu, Chandrababu Naidu and Jagan Mohan Reddy in Andhra Pradesh likely to support him. And if NDA does not make him the PM, he could switch over to the UPA to get the top job. This is what a section of his supporters argue. Well, there is many a slip between the cup and the lip.

From the BJP, Gujarat strongman Modi is not the only name being floated around for the top job. You have the veteran of many a battle, LK Advani, who was the prime ministerial candidate in the 2009 election as well and could well be the aspirant in 2014 also. He was there in the 2004 elections too but unfortunately NDA lost to the Congress on both occasions and the dream could not turn into a reality.

Then you have Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, Sushma Swaraj, whose name has been floated by Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray who described  her as the most deserving. “At present there is only one person who is intelligent, brilliant — Sushma Swaraj,” Thackeray said in his mouthpiece, Saamana. Even before Thackeray said that, she was a contender for the job in her party.

Due to his suave and sophisticated image and the ability to make friends across political divide, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Arun Jaitley is another candidate. His name has been endorsed by former BJP leader, Govindacharya. As the date  nears, there will be more endorsements for his name. Though no one in BJP takes Govindacharya  seriously these days, Jaitley finds a lot of support for his candidature in the party. Punjab BJP is already looking for a seat in the state for him to contest so that he makes his Lok Sabha debut in the next general elections.

From the NDA, Sharad Yadav’s name is also floated occasionally even though he derives his political strength from JD(U), whose prime vote catcher remains Nitish Kumar. His debating skills and parliamentary experience are cited prominently in his Curriculum Vitae by his supporters whose number does not exceed a dozen or two.

Now if you turn the gaze on the other side of the divide, you find Mulayam Singh Yadav flexing his muscles and positioning himself as the candidate for the top job. After handing over Uttar Pradesh to his son Akhilesh Yadav, the senior Yadav has turned whole heartedly to national politics and is looking for a possible situation which existed in the late 1980s and early 90s when VP Singh, H D Deve Gowda and Inder Kumar Gujaral became prime ministers in quick succession before losing the script in the 1991 polls. But Yadav does not have the support of a Harkishan Singh Surjeet now and his attempt to cobble up a conglomeration of regional parties is yet to take off.

Ruling UPA and its main constituent Congress would obviously smile at so many contenders for the top job. “The post is not vacant,” is the reply of Congress spokespersons if you pose the question to them. The party itself has no dearth of contenders. Manmohan Singh would complete two terms as PM in 2014 and would obviously be the contender again with his few supporters arguing that if he can remain the PM for two terms then why not a third term even though he would be 82 by then.

Rahul Gandhi would naturally be the choice of party President Sonia Gandhi if Congress is voted to power with the kind of majority it got in the 2009 polls. Rahul has been waiting, learning his tricks in the organization and would have gained requisite experience by then, his supporters argue. He may not have won any election for the party but Congress leaders — senior or junior — have been proposing his name ever since he joined politics and are all praise for his “potential” and how he could become the best Prime Minister of the country. No one in the party — from the humble block level worker to General Secretaries of AICC and the Cabinet Ministers — would oppose his name if the numbers favour UPA, post 2014 polls.

But what if the Congress manages to get the numbers despite two lackluster terms and Rahul is not ready even by then and asks for more time to learn and see the country. A slew of names are taken in the Congress which includes those of Defense Minister A K Antony, Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh, Finance Minister P Chidambaram or even rank outsiders who have the trust of the Gandhi family.

People are watching the latest edition of Kaun Banega Crorepati with great interest and want to see who gets the jackpot of `5 crore this season. They would also be keenly watching the political events unfold to see who becomes the Prime Minister in May 2014. (October 1, 2012) 

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