Haryana BJP sore with INLD

By Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI, AUG. 11. The Haryana unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party seems to be looking for a way out of the stranglehold of its alliance with the Indian National Lok Dal. The feeling is growing that 20 years of ``alliance politics'' practised by the party in this State has yielded only a shrinking support base, evident from the halving of its members in the Haryana Assembly in the elections last year.

``We feel that alliance politics has not helped the BJP to grow in Haryana,'' the newly elected president of the State unit, Mr. Rattan Lal Khataria, said here today. He has vowed to prepare the BJP to ``fight all the 90 seats in the Assembly,'' when it is election time again.

The problem, he admits rather candidly, is that ``the INLD is a partner in the National Democratic Alliance,'' and although he was reluctant to expand on this, the message came out clearly that this definitely cramped the style of the party. His repeated appeals to the INLD chief and Haryana Chief Minister, Mr. Om Prakash Chautala, to ``treat the BJP State unit the way he is treated in the NDA'' has fallen on deaf ears, and even a simple demand that a coordination committee of the BJP and the INLD be set up has gone unheard.

With Mr. Chautala in the driver's seat, it is difficult for the BJP to attract the Scheduled Castes and other Backward Castes to its fold, and the dominating `jat' community is entirely with the INLD. So who is the BJP left with? Perhaps a handful of the upper castes and the traders.

And it is the traders and the professional class, many of whom belong to the upper castes, who the INLD has been targeting.

A professional tax, increases in house tax, problems with sales tax - and all this has meant that the BJP as a supporting party has had a lot to explain. Mr. Khataria pointed out that the resentment among the people had grown - the traders' cell in Jagadri kept the markets closed for a full 15 days last month, and on August 9 the whole of Haryana observed a `bandh'.

Mr. Khataria plans to strengthen the party organisation as well as start a systematic programme of making contact with the people, beginning with the village level. One idea is to establish `shakti kendras' (power centres) for every cluster of 7 to 10 villages composed of the most important BJP grassroots leaders from that area.

To begin with, a delegation from the BJP's Haryana unit plans to meet the Prime Minister to impress upon him the need to bring the Chief Ministers of Haryana and Punjab to sort out the problems of the Sutlej-Yamuna Link canal project, just as he did with the Cauvery issue. This issue had become urgent for the farmers of Haryana who are facing an acute water problem, he said.

But the problem is that the central leadership may be too engrossed with keeping the Government going in New Delhi to worry about the woes of State units. After all, as long as there is the NDA, alliances in the States are bound to be foisted on the State units, whether they like it or not.

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Section  : National
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