[India Today]

Published date: 31st May 1982

If Politics is the art of deception, the Congress(I) symbolises its highly developed state. After crying itself hoarse about its inability to conduct the Garhwal Lok Sabha by-election, the ruling party in Uttar Pradesh seems on the surface surprisingly resigned to the victory of its bete noire, Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna, 63, president of the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP). There is no show of strength of the kind witnessed when the by-election was first held on June 14 last year, with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the chief ministers of Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh pitching into the electioneering, and policemen from neighbouring Congress(l)-ruled states flooding the remote hill-bound constituency: The only VIP to make the trek to Garhwal last fortnight was Union Home Minister Giani Zail Singh who flew in and out in a one-day lightning visit. May 19, polling date, will fall exactly two years after Bahuguna resigned his Lok Sabha seat after quitting the Congress(I). In every way, the by-election has become his biggest political battle so far; his opponent Chandra Mohan Singh Negi, Uttar Pradesh’s m1mster for hill development, is only a front for Bahuguna’s real rival-Mrs Gandhi herself.

Well-organised : Yet Mrs Gandhi is tenacious when it comes to combating her political foes, and it seems inconceivable that she will let Garhwal go to Bahuguna without further ado. This time she is relying on her party’s youth brigades. Hundreds of young men of the Youth Congress(I) have stormed the towns in Pauri and Chamoli districts. Under the supervision of State Irrigation and Transport Minister Veer Bahadur Singh and party leader Dharam Vir in Lucknow, Youth Congress(!) chieftains Sanjay Singh and Suresh Ajmani have set up base in Dehra Dun, and the khadi-clad boys have been furiously plastering posters, yelling slogans, and literally painting the towns’ walls red with their theme line: ‘Jai Indira, Jai Garhwal’.

ln addition, the state Government sent in 9,000 men of the police and the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC). Just outside Rishikesh sprawls a huge PAC camp, the transit point for truck-loads of rifle-toting PAC jawans headed for the constituency’s 871 polling stations. This time, the Government has obviously learnt the lessons of June 1981, when police from Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Punjab were sent in without the knowledge of the Chief Election Commissioner Sham Lal Shakdher who delivered the ruling party a resounding if unexpected snub when he ordered a repoll. Shakdher found prima facie evidence to support Bahuguna’s complaint that Haryana and Punjab police personnel had intimidated voters and even participated in booth­ capturing. The irregularities were later confirmed by a 3-member team of the Ci1izens for Democracy (cm) led by veteran journalists Ajit Bhattacharjea and B.G. Verghese.

Understandably, then, Bahuguna is inclined to endow his campaign liberally with hyperbole. The Garhwal poll, he tells a late evening crowd in Rishikesh, is as historic as Jallianwalla Bagh or Champaran. “My symbol is the tarazu, the scales of justice, but Mrs Gandhi’s symbol is the hand, with all five fingers unequal in length. From her, expect only injustice and imbalance.” On a typical day, meetings become tedious and repetitive and the ennui in his entourage tends to grow.

Dull Campaign: Nor does Bahuguna’s rhetoric liven up things much. His themes are almost calculated to dull his listeners. The root cause of the country’s bad state, he says one day, is coal, and goes on to berate Mrs Gandhi for not spending even two days in a coal-mine. India is selling out to the (International Monetary Fund) IMF. It is exporting non-renewable resources like iron ore .and bauxite. Taking leave of national issues, Bahuguna occasionally harangues the authorities for doing nothing to increase the milk yield of Garhwal’s diminutive cows.

Bahuguna’s electoral road show like his party, is a one-man affair. Bahuguna’s leg has not fully healed from a fracture sustained in September last year, and the walking-stick he carries lends him a certain look of raffishness. Accompanied only by valet and an armed bodyguard, the martyr of India’s longest-ever electoral battle travels in a white Ambassador, a tin trunk and a holdall perched on its roof. Bahuguna travels heavy, and the dandy in him sees to it that he is liberally supplied with starched khadi clothes and caps.

Negi, who was elected to the Uttar Pradesh Assembly from Lansdowne constituency-which falls within Garhwal-is definitely not as charismatic as Bahuguna. But he has the Congress(I)’s entire machinery backing him. His posters and graffiti have literally drowned out Bahuguna’s, and his strategy seems simply to be to plead that Bahuguna will never be able to give the voters what they need.

Bahuguna, in turn, tells the voters that Negi is like a son to him, and ought to be allowed to remain hill development minister-a post in which he could do more good for the Garhwalis, while Bahuguna could tackle “national-and international” issues in Delhi. That the Negi camp is not averse to using official means to ferry people to meetings was evident when two buses belonging to Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) were requisitioned for a meeting at Chilla, near Hardwar, on May 5. Two days later, Bahuguna complained that he had been refused permission to address his largest meeting in Dehra Dun on May 16.

Uphill Task: In comparison with his opponent’s resources, Bahuguna faced a task that was uphill not merely because of his constituency’s terrain. The DSP is still a nebulous party: it has only 14 members in the 425-seat state Assembly and 11 members in the 542-seat Lok Sabha. Travel is tortuous and Bahuguna’s men complain about a scarcity of posters, party flags and money.

Yet, it is clear that strategically the Congress(I) has cooked its own goose by repeatedly scuttling the by-election. This time around, the poll is expected to remain on schedule, because any disruption will have an immediate impact on elections to four state Assemblies and six other Lok Sabha by-elections. For this reason, say Bahuguna’s men, if there is trouble it will come on polling day itself. If that happens, of course, the Congress(l)’s democratic credentials will be shattered once and for all.

The Congress(I) is relying heavily on the caste factor: 70 per cent of Garhwal’s voters are Thakurs, the community to which Negi belongs, and Bahuguna’s fellow Brahmins form less than 10 per cent. Moreover, Garhwal has nearly 40,000 ex-servicemen, who are mostly Thakurs and reportedly pro­ Congress(I), But Bahuguna has many powerful Thakurs among his supporters,

Last fortnight, with all the logistics stacked against him, Bahuguna was still the odds-on favourite. “Mrs Gandhi loves having lap-dogs around her,” he said, “and I hate dogs of all kinds. That is why she is afraid of me.” The tide is currently in Bahuguna’s favour, but the question that hangs over the Garhwal hills is not whether he will win-that seems fairly certain-but whether some last-minute ‘crisis’ will once again throw the by-election into jeopardy.