BJP looks ahead, at life without Jaya
George Iype in New Delhi
With All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham chief J Jayalalitha's threat to withdraw support to the Atal
Bihari Vajpayee government on the Cauvery waters row defused for the time-being, Bharatiya Janata Party strategists are devising plans for the coalition's longevity without the maverick Tamil Nadu partner.
BJP sources said the prime minister's emissaries -- Defence Minister
George Fernandes and Pramod Mahajan -- who met the AIADMK general secretary in Madras on Wednesday did not extract any promise from her on the Tamil Nadu front's continued support to the government.
"But we were optimistic that Jayalalitha would not precipitate a crisis
over the Cauvery waters row on two counts," a BJP
functionary told Rediff On The Net.
Firstly, he said, Jayalalitha could not have acted "stupidly" when
there have been no protests from the people of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka on the new Cauvery water-sharing scheme reached between the four riparian states.
Secondly, though the AIADMK has shown considerable interest to dump the BJP for a Congress-led coalition, "Jayalalitha is convinced that in the given political scenario, the BJP government coalition is the best bet," the BJP leader said.
He said the AIADMK chief appears more concerned about the cases against her than the Cauvery waters issue. "She feels that the cases against her could be better taken care of in the BJP-led coalition rather than in a government cobbled together by the Congress and the Left parties," the BJP leader added.
The BJP leadership also feels that Jayalalitha's hard posturing on the
water-sharing issue was an attempt to mobilise public opinion in the
AIADMK's favour in Tamil Nadu.
BJP strategists view Jayalalitha's refusal to pull down the government
on Thursday as a victory of Vajpayee's ability to solve intricate
inter-state problems like the Cauvery.
"The water-sharing agreement on Cauvery was a significant achievement for the government because it really proves the prime minister's statesmanship," BJP vice-president and MP K L Sharma told Rediff On The
Net.
"We do not feel threatened by the frequent warnings issued by AIADMK and
its allies. We feel that they have a right to air their complaints, problems and difficulties. We are ready to talk to them and solve these issues," he
stated.
Sharma claimed that the BJP leadership has tried its best in the past four and a half months to keep all the alliances partners united. "I do not think any of our allies, including the AIADMK, are seriously thinking of withdrawing support to the Vajpayee government," he said.
He also categorically said that the BJP-led coalition will survive even if Jayalalitha's threats turn out to be realistic in future.
BJP insiders believe the Cauvery issue will dominate the
government-AIADMK relations once more as the Supreme Court's decision to extend the hearing on the water sharing scheme is slated for next Monday.
Jayalalitha will flex her muscles again and the government will find itself in a bind in case the court rejects the scheme which the Vajpayee government had notified even before reporting it to the apex court.
"We expect the frequency of Jayalalitha's threats to increase in
the days to come. But her warning of withdrawal of support have helped us to foresee various possibilities to live without Jayalalitha in the long run," a BJP leader told Rediff On The Net.
The assessment in the BJP camp is that Jayalalitha is not at all averse to the idea of dumping the Vajpayee government to join hands with the Congress headed by Sonia Gandhi. But Sonia has not yet made up her mind to accept the AIADMK with a set of similar demands in a Congress-led coalition.
Jayalalitha and her allies from Tamil Nadu, with 27 members of Parliament, is the biggest alliance partner of the BJP coalition. Sensing that the BJP-AIADMK
will reach a point of no return in the coming days, the BJP leadership is chalking out an alternative strategy to survive in government without Jayalalitha.
The BJP coalition with the outside support from the estranged United Front Partners -- the Telugu Desam Party and the National Conference -- has a parliamentary strength of 276 seats. During Vajpayee's confidence vote in
April, the coalition government had 13 more MPs than required to prove the
majority in the Lok Sabha.
While the independent supporter Buta Singh is no longer with the government,
Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy had refrained from voting during the
vote of confidence.
While the party increased its strength in the House by three after the Lok
Sabha by-elections, the BJP strategists hope that the AIADMK leader
-- despite her rhetoric -- might not be able to keep its
allies together, particularly the four MPs of the MDMK and one of the Tamizhaga Rajiv
Congress.
Thus the BJP leaders believe that Vajpayee government would need just 14 MPs to sail through in Parliament in the event of Jayalalitha and her allies deciding to pull the rug from under Vajpayee's feet.
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