BJP stars to play supporting roles

Jaswant Singh, Pramod Mahajan, Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, Venakaiah Naidu, even Ananth Kumar (who was a sitting member of the 13th Lok Sabha from Karnataka), will stay out. Go statewise and you won’t find any of the top leaders in the candidate lists.

And yet, these are the people who run the party and make decisions. The explanation is that most of them did not fight the Lok Sabha elections in 1999 either. However, the fact is many of them are in the RS, and there is no pressing reason why they should give up seats.

This confirms the trend of politicians preferring the safer RS route to contesting the LS elections, even though it means decision-making by those largely in the Upper House.

So Uttar Pradesh won’t see Rajnath Singh, Kalraj Mishra or Kalyan Singh. In Bihar, Sushil Mody, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Ram Kirpal Sinha and Mridula Singh are keeping out. In Maharashtra, neither Bal Apte nor BJP spokesperson Prakash Jawedekar is going to take the leap.

In Gujarat, Keshubhai Patel will remain where he is. In Rajasthan, Ramdas Agarwal, Hari Shankar Bhabra, Lalit Chaturvedi, Mahesh Sharma —are not going to jump in.

Of course, some of these leaders have been given other responsibilities. Jaitley reportedly wanted to contest from Amritsar and the Akalis had offered him support. But Advani and party chief Venkaiah Naidu told him to look after media coverage instead.

Similarly, Mahajan, who engineered the Rajasthan win for the party, was offered a choice of seats in the state by CM Vasundhara Raje Scindia—Jaipur, Jhalawar or Kota. But he will concentrate on poll management nationally.

Sushma, who took on Sonia Gandhi in Bellary last time and polled 3.5 lakh votes in a constituency many had not even heard of, has not been asked to contest. Naidu, who could have stood from AP, has already declared that he will eschew parliamentary politics and stick to building the organisation.

Interestingly, it’s not a very different story in the Congress. Pranab Mukherjee was to be fielded from Jangipur, with the Left not averse to pitting a weak candidate. Many in the party wanted Manmohan Singh to contest from Punjab, and it was felt he would win because Sikhs would see him as a potential prime ministerial candidate.

Ambika Soni had expressed her willingness to contest from Hoshiarpur, Ahmed Patel from Bharuch (from where he has won three times). Kapil Sibal might still contest from one of the constituencies in Delhi, and Natwar Singh from Bharatpur.

Besides, there was talk of Arjun Singh fighting from Satna and Ashok Gehlot from Jodhpur or Pali. However, these leaders are now said to have developed second thoughts. Some, like their counterparts in the BJP, have been told to look after the campaign.