Now official: Uma gives RSS a foot and more in govt door

Her cow economy, en-masse cabinet dips in the Narmada and vegetarian drive weren’t enough. The RSS has decided Madhya Pradesh Chief Min...

Her cow economy, en-masse cabinet dips in the Narmada and vegetarian drive weren’t enough. The RSS has decided Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Uma Bharti also needs a vibhag pracharak, Anil Dave, as her political advisor, with Cabinet rank.

It is for the first time that the RSS—which insists it is a ‘‘non-political’’ organisation—has directly ‘‘loaned’’ one of its cadres for a government appointment. While sources close to the CM say the move is to ensure better coordination between the Sangh and government, it is being seen as measure by the RSS to exercise greater control over the Uma administration.

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There is a general feeling that the government has failed to send out the ‘‘right message’’ on performance so far. While Uma realises that she owes much of her electoral success to the work the RSS put in on her behalf, she has never been part of the Sangh organisation in the state.

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Under the circumstances—at least from Uma’s point of view—the choice of Dave could be the best of a bad bargain. A vibhag pracharak of Bhopal, Dave has an unusual profile for an RSS man. A trained commercial pilot as adept with a mouse and laptop, Dave had coordinated the team that masterminded much of Uma’s assembly campaign.

The three rooms which the team used had been designated Jawli, after the place where Shivaji killed Afzal Khan. But while the two other members of the team—Atul Jain and Shailendra Sharma—are already Uma’s advisors, she was seen to have fallen out with Dave after the elections.

What seems to have brought the two together again was the hold BJP organising general secretary for MP Kaptan Singh Solanki—considered the most powerful RSS man in MP and Chhatisgarh—and his confidant Arvind Singh Bhadoria have come to enjoy in the state.

With Dave’s appointment, Solanki will coordinate with him and exercise ‘‘direct say’’ over the running of the government. However, Uma must be glad at the lowering of profile of Bhadoria who—working out of the BJP party office—had emerged as an alternative power centre in the state. Neither she nor her team of advisors was perceived to have an easy working relationship with Bhadoria.

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While Solanki is too senior in the Sangh hierarchy for Uma to challenge directly, Dave will at least ensure a counterweight to Bhadoria. For the RSS, the appointment is a gamble. The move puts the pulls and pressures within the Sangh up for public scrutiny and ensures that it can no longer distance itself from the failures of the Uma administration. However, the RSS believes that the criticism coming the government’s way so soon after the Sadhvi took over had left them with no choice.