Round The States

New Delhi, 21 May 2009

Welcome Poll Outcome

MOST STATES CUT DOWN TO SIZE

General election 2009 has been truly unprecedented in more ways than one. Not only has it given the Congress-led UPA the numbers in the Lok Sabha to provide a much-needed stable Government at the Centre, it has also cut down to size the regional parties, and through them most of the States, some of which had come to wield undue power vis a vis the Centre. The poll has also blown sky high the myth of the Left’s invincibility in West Bengal and Kerala. It has been badly mauled in both the States, confirming one basic fact of political life. The people of India have had enough of slogan mongering and hyperbole. Enough too of casteism, communalism and criminalization. They want good governance that will enable them to lead their lives peacefully in an orderly, law-abiding society. UP is a case in point. The Congress has revived in the State beyond all expectations, thanks mainly to the horrendous misrule first of Mulayam Singh and now Mayawati and their divisive regional parties.

Mamata Banerji and her Trinamool Congress, on the one hand, and Pranab Mukherjee and the Congress have every reason to rejoice on the outcome of the poll battle in West Bengal. However, what they have succeeded in doing today could have been achieved years earlier. As Insaf has pointed out time and again over the past two decades, the people of West Bengal have been yearning for the past three decades for a change, having had enough of the Left. But the Congress foolishly failed all along to take advantage of the situation because of internal divisions and dissensions. Even when Mamata was in the Congress Party, West Bengal had two competing Congresses --- one led by her as the President of the Indian Youth Congress and the other led by the PCC Chief, Somen Mitra. Prime Minister Narsimha Rao tried hard to bring the two together, but without luck. Happily, for the people the two have now come together and both sides have buried the hatchet --- at least for now.

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YSR’s Popular Bang

Andhra’s Y.S. Chandrasekhara Reddy has moved into his second term as the State’s Chief Minister with a popular bang on Wednesday last. Minutes after he had taken the oath of office as the first Chief Minister to be sworn in for a record consecutive term after a full five-year term, he dramatically signed two orders in keeping with his campaign promises. First, he signed orders raising the Rs.2 per kg rice entitlement for BPL (below poverty line) families from 4 kg to 6 kg per person. Second, he announced a hike in free power to farmers from the present seven hours to nine hours. The rice sop will benefit 2 crore families and cost Rs 4,000 crore annually. The power sop will cost Rs 3,000 and benefit 26 lakh families. Interestingly, the official ceremony was followed by readings from the Vedas, Quran and Bible. YSR thereafter addressed the gathering for 40 minutes and declared: “All the welfare measures intended to help the poor will continue irrespective of the financial burden they impose on the State”.

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Mayawati Goes Beserk

Uttar Pradesh led all the other States in the high drama that marked the recent poll and reversed fortunes for the BSP supremo Mayawati, leaving her bruised and livid. The Dalit leader, who had set her eyes on the prime ministerial seat after winning a majority in the Assembly elections two years ago, had all her hopes dashed. The BSP came third in line after the Samjawadi Party and the Congress in the vote tally. With just 20 seats out of 80 in her kitty, Mayawati has only herself to blame. She seems to have forgotten the message of the mandate she had got: people wanted a clean and efficient government. Her promise to end the “goonda raj” of the SP got lost in self-glorification. Her government pulled down state-owned structures, replacing them with memorials and statutes costing the public exchequer crores and crores of rupees. Worse, she unabashedly put up candidates with criminal backgrounds in utter disregard to the popular sentiment, brazenly describing them as her modern-day Robin Hoods. .

However, in a review of what went wrong in the State’s performance, an angry behenji passed on the buck to “non-performing” officials. She went on a sacking spree. On Tuesday last she dismissed 100-odd chairmen, vice-chairmen and members of different PSUs. She suspended two party MLAs for anti-party activity. Not enough, she has dissolved the party’s frontal organization—“Bhaichara” (brotherhood), district coordination and election booth committees across the country. All party-incharge too have been sacked. After the national executive and parliamentary board’s meeting, it is expected that Mayawati may seek the resignations of all her ministers in UP to facilitate her to drop or retain those judged on their performance. Bureaucrats too fear being in the firing line. Officials in 12-odd districts may get the sack following the BSP candidates losing to the Congress. Will it help?

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Uttarakhand To Have New CM

Uttarakhand may see a change in guard, following the ruling BJP’s disastrous performance in the Lok Sabha elections. On Monday last, Chief Minister Maj-Gen (Retd.) B C Khanduri submitted his resignation to Party President Rajnath Singh owning moral responsibility for the loss of all five seats to the Congress. The party’s defeat is seen to be more of sabotage from within as its workers failed to come out and mobilize the voters. The rebellion in the party is apparently due to the alleged “high handed functioning” of Khanduri and strong opposition to him by former chief minister Bhagat Singh Koshiyari. The latter has been targeting Khanduri since he became CM after the Assembly polls in 2007 and is considered to be the front-runner for the top post. 

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Chamling Makes History

Sikkim’s Pawan Kumar Chamling, 58, has made history. He has taken over as the Chief Minister for the fourth consecutive term. Incredibly enough, his Sikkim Democratic Party (SDF) totally swept the polls. It bagged all 32 Assembly and lone Lok Sabha seats, leaving the Congress, BJP, NCP and the CPM high and dry in their bid to break SDF’s 15-year rule. Both Rahul Gandhi’s campaign and the BJP’s accusation of him holding citizenship of both India and Nepal did not cut much ice with the Sikkimese. This is primarily so as Chamling’s main campaign focus was on “Sikkim Nirman” --peace and development in the State. While the SDF’s spectacular victory matches mentor Nar Bhadur Bhandari, Sikkim Sangram Parshad’s similar sweep two decades ago, this time around the Himalayan State has withstood the onslaught of national parties, felt elsewhere in the country.--INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)