Pachauri, as PCC chief, faces challenges from within | N.D.Sharma

Published on 06-03-2008 In National

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Pachauri, as PCC chief, faces challenges from within

Within a few days of taking charge as the Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) president, Suresh Pachauri had a tiff with a former PCC general secretary who insisted that he was still the general secretary and, as such, had the right to issue a show cause notice to a PCC office functionary.

Deepchand Yadav was made one of the general secretaries when Subhash Yadav was appointed PCC president nearly four years ago. Afterwards, the PCC was dissolved. Though Subhash Yadav was renominated as the PCC president, he was never permitted to constitute his working committee or appoint regular officer-bearers. (He had, nevertheless, appointed on his own over a score of PCC spokesmen).

In any case, the working committee and the office-bearers go as and when a new PCC chief is appointed, Pachauri's supporters tried to reason with Deepchand Yadav who stubbornly refused to accept this argument. Eventually, AICC general secretary in charge of the Madhya Pradesh affairs V.Narayanswami had to intervene and tell Deepchand Yadav and other detractors of Pachauri that neither the PCC working committee nor the PCC office-bearers existed as of today.

The incident, though a minor one, is not without significance. Deepchand Yadav is close to Subhash Yadav, the outgoing PCC chief. Both owe their political career to Union HRD Minister Arjun Singh who has, for nearly a quarter century, dominated the Madhya Pradesh Congress, directly or indirectly. Arjun Singh has never liked Pachauri. For that matter, he has never liked Brahman leaders in the Congress. Digvijay Singh shares Arjun Singh's caste bias.

Pachauri took charge as the PCC chief with a great fanfare. Scores of welcome arches were erected through the 20-km route from the airport to the PCC office. Large hoardings thanking '10, Janpath' were put up throughout the route. As Bhopal Mayor Sunil Sood is a Pachauri man, he had worked overnight to ensure band-playing crowds every here and there on the route. Conspicuous was the absence of outgoing PCC president Subhash Yadav and other leaders owing allegiance to Arjun Singh and Digvijay Singh.

Arjun Singh's sentiments towards Pachauri can be explained by an innocuous-looking incident. A Master of subtle games as he is, Arjun Singh had made a dash to Bhopal at the peak of the Lok Sabha election campaign in September 1999 to announce at a press conference that the Kargil conflict was stage-managed by (then) Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif to give the BJP an advantage in the elections. He did not elaborate. Pachauri, who was the Congress candidate from Bhopal constituency, could never decipher Arjun Singh's enigmatic observation but always had a feeling that it had harmed his electoral interests. He was more positive about Digvijay Singh's 'mischief'. Pachauri lost the election to the BJP's Uma Bharati by a big margin.

Pachauri had got his nomination for the Bhopal Lok Sabha constituency in the face of opposition from Arjun Singh and Digvijay Singh. Both of them wanted S.

S.Thakur to be made the Congress candidate. Incidentally, that was the only time when Pachauri ever contested a direct election.

Digvijay Singh, as the chief minister, had his nominee as the PCC president, who had to go after the ouster of the Digvijay Singh government in 2003. Arjun Singh then tried hard to get his younger son Ajay Singh (Rahul Bhaiya) nominated either as the PCC president or as the Leader of the Opposition. However, the centre-stage occupied by an OBC (Uma Bharati) in the State made the Congress high command opt for an OBC (Subhash Yadav) as the head of the PCC and a tribal (Jamuna Devi) as the Leader of the Opposition. In these appointments, too, the party leadership had tried to strike a balance. Subhash Yadav is an Arjun Singh man while Jamuna Devi belonged to the Shyama Charan Shukla camp.

Digvijay Singh had, meanwhile, been appointed AICC general secretary where he moved close to Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi by virtue of the work allotted to him. As certain sections of the Madhya Pradesh Congress started demanding removal of Subhash Yadav, Arjun Singh renewed his efforts, this time through Digvijay Singh, to get the coveted post for his son. Pachauri's choice as the PCC president was apparently dictated by Mayawati's social engineering as practised in Uttar Pradesh. It was over a quarter century ago that a Brahman headed the PCC briefly. The community had since been ignored in the State Congress. Pachauri's caste, rather than his leadership qualities (scoffed at by his detractors) clinched the issue.

But his appointment was not without strings attached. Arjun Singh managed to get his son appointed as chairman of the Campaign Committee. Both the appointments were announced simultaneously. Ajay Singh, as a political leader, does not have much of a spark. But as the elections draw nearer, he is expected to become a rallying point of those owing allegiance to the Thakur leaders, Arjun Singh and Digvijay Singh. This is not going to be a pleasant situation for Pachauri. What a nuisance a rival centre of power can become, Pachauri must be remembering pretty well. He was himself campaign in-charge during the 2003 Assembly elections and Digvijay Singh was all the time more worried about what Pachauri must be doing or saying than about the doings and sayings of the BJP leaders.

What favours Pachauri is the pent up anger of the people against the present regime. After taking over as the PCC chief, he has held rallies and meetings at a few places and he has received incredible response from the people. Incredible by Pachauri's standards because he had never been a mass leader and, thus, not accustomed to drawing large crowds. The turnout at his meetings has virtually overwhelmed him. The people are wont to go with whoever can voice their grievances and generate some hope in their bosoms for a redress. The spontaneous crowds that Pachauri is drawing are reminiscent of Uma Bharati's campaign against the Digvijay Singh government's misrule in 2003. Uma Bharati had the entire party behind her. Can Pachauri ensure that?

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