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Kalyan Singh waiting for the inevitable

Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow

Even as the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership held high-level talks in New Delhi to look for a suitable successor to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kalyan Singh, the latter, in what could be an act of defiance, decided to go to Ayodhya tomorrow for a darshan at the temporary temple built over the demolished Babri Masjid.

Throughout the day, Singh remained holed up at his official residence on Kalidas Marg. While he refused to give anyone an audience, except for a few bureaucrats attached to his personal secretariat, he continued to clear pending files. And as if to prove that he was firmly in the saddle, he also issued a long list of transfers of senior IAS, IPS and PCS [Provincial Civil Service] officers.

Singh also issued a formal notice for the next Cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

Interestingly, the chief minister's office also launched the much-awaited video-conferencing facility between Lucknow and certain district headquarters. The first live demonstration was, however, carried out by the chief secretary as the chief minister was stated to be "busy".

Contrary to reports that the party leadership had summoned him for talks in Delhi, Kalyan Singh was understood to have told a close confidante, "I have not been invited, then why must I go to Delhi?"

But no one knows either what prompted him to suddenly turn to Ayodhya at this juncture. At the outset of the recent general election, he had preferred to visit the Vindhyavasini Devi temple in Mirzapur, much to the annoyance of Ayodhya-Faizabad MP Vinay Katiyar, who wanted the chief minister to keep to his tradition of launching the party's campaign from Ayodhya.

Meanwhile, the trio of his staunch adversaries - Public Works Department Minister Kalraj Misra, Housing and Tourism Minister Lalji Tandon, and state BJP chief Rajnath Singh - flew to Delhi together by a Jet airways flight this morning.

According to the political grapevine, Misra, front-runner for the chief minister's post, has managed to bring both Tandon and Rajnath Singh around to accept his claim.

Until not very long ago, Tandon and Singh were just as critical of Misra as they were of the chief minister.

What they and many others held against Misra was his unsavoury reputation throughout his ministerial tenure -- his alleged involvement in the Rs 1 billion Ambedkar Park scandal together with former chief minister Mayawati, his alleged nexus with slain gangster Sriprakash Shukla, and the large-scale financial bungling in his department.

Significantly, Misra's critics also sought to know "how a member of the Upper House [of the state legislature] was even being considered for the top job". One of them pointed out, "Misraji must be the one and only party leader to be considered for chief ministership of a state even though he has yet to contest a direct election."

The dilemma over the change of guard in UP therefore seems quite natural. It was the failure of the BJP leadership to find an ideal replacement for Kalyan Singh that extended his lease each time he dared the party's central leadership to remove him.

Kalyan Singh had first displayed his belligerence when, about a year ago, he warned the party's central leadership that any attempt to replace him would lead to a mid-term election in Uttar Pradesh. His belligerence only grew as time passed.

But after the party's debacle in the state in the recent Lok Sabha election, he was pinned down. His provocative statements only brought him into a direct confrontation with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, thereby accelerating Kalyan's ouster.

All eyes are now focussed on who will get Vajpayee's approval to occupy the most sought after chair in Lucknow. The finalisation of a successor will only determine the date of Kalyan Singh's farewell. Unless, of course, he pulls a new rabbit out of his hat in Ayodhya tomorrow.

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