Rajasthan: Puppet on a chain

The BJP’s decision to instal first-time MLA Bhajan Lal Sharma as chief minister last December despite his lack of political or administrative experience has not quite paid off. By some accounts, the chief minister does not take any decision without consulting BJP leaders in Delhi, and his mentor Union minister Prahlad Joshi. Sharma has visited Delhi at least 36 times, and his stay in the national capital has extended to over two months in the first nine months of his term, claim BJP MLAs.

They also allege that chief secretary Sudhansh Pant is actually the de facto chief minister. After 10 months in office, the BJP government is clearly yet to find its feet. Its own legislators have been busy cracking jokes that bureaucrats are running the sarkar and ministers and MLAs find themselves sidelined. Worse, they claim that the bureaucrats are divided into two camps, and senior bureaucrats leading the two camps are actually running the show.

If the central leadership had planned to micro-manage the state from Delhi, the grand plan would appear to have failed. Too many power centres in the state reporting to too many leaders in Delhi have added to the confusion. The demoralisation has affected even the party workers and the party’s membership drive has been affected. Less than half the target of enrolling 55 lakh members by September has been achieved.

Paper leaks in recruitment tests and the government’s failure to honour its promise of giving 100 units of electricity free to power consumers has upset the people. The disappointment is more because the power department has put new registrations on hold.

Stung by criticism that he was but a puppet in the hands of the bureaucrats, the chief minister convened a meeting of divisional commissioners and district magistrates and, says the grapevine, asserted, “I am the boss”.

This invited more ridicule, and former chief minister Ashok Gehlot described the state administration as a ‘circus’. There was much evidence of poor governance, Gehlot declared, pointing out that the government had failed to prevent even bureaucrats (he named Taru Surana) from dying of dengue.

Accusing the BJP government of undoing what the previous Congress government had initiated, Gehlot bitingly told the media, "The current government is unable to provide even pension to the elderly and widows. All the programmes that were implemented during our time have been stopped.”

Over a dozen new districts proposed by the Congress government were put on hold by the Bhajan Lal Sharma government, he said, and a committee set up by the new government recommended a reduction in the number of new districts.

Leader of Opposition in the assembly Tikaram Jully accused the Sharma government of undoing the experiment of having two municipal corporations instead of one in the cities of Jaipur, Jodhpur and Kota. This had led to improved city governance but the BJP government had restored the earlier structure.

Jully also pointed out that the BJP had promised to implement the Eastern Rajasthan Canal Project (ERCP). While the implementation requires  an MoU between Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, the agreement is yet to be signed though both states have BJP governments in the saddle.

English-medium schools started by the Congress government were not being properly managed, claimed Jully, and several colleges started by the Congress government were being closed, he said. He also noted that of the 660 state-run colleges in the state, nearly 500 were functioning without a principal.

Deteriorating law and order, an increase in the incidence of rape of minors and unchecked drug trafficking are being held up as some of the other glaring failures of the state government. Jully maintained that drones were being used from Pakistan to deliver heroin in Ganganagar district and pointed out large-scale seizure of narcotics reported from Raisinghnagar and Anupgarh.

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A Soft Target?

Is he being unfairly hounded? Being a Dalit and an MLA only for the second time, deputy chief minister Prem Chand Bairwa, many believe, is being maligned because he happens to be a soft target. His supporters also believe that the social media campaign against him is designed to divert attention from the chief minister himself, who stands accused of poor governance.

Part of Bairwa’s current problems, however, can be attributed to his own indiscretions. When his minor son was seen driving an expensive looking modified vehicle in the company of wealthy friends, it triggered a social media storm. What made it worse were the police escorts tagging along with Bairwa junior.

In his initial reaction, Bairwa denied any wrongdoing on the part of his son. The vehicle belonged to a friend of his son's, he asserted. When pointed out that his son did not have a driving license, he explained that after he became one of the two deputy chief ministers, his son was befriended by several wealthy young men. This was the first time his son had seen luxury vehicles and was carried away, he added by way of explanation.

This variation of ‘boys will be boys’ made the discourse even more heated and toxic, with people asking why police escorts were provided to the young men and what action had transport authorities taken against the transgressors.

The issue died down after the transport department, which reports to the deputy chief minister, fined Chinmay Bairwa a sum of Rs 7,000 for dangerous driving and modifying the vehicle without first seeking permission from the department.

His wealthy friend has been served with a notice and if the reply fails to satisfy the department, the vehicle may, just may, be seized in future. The symbolic and soft rap on the knuckle was not exemplary enough, felt many; but when have children of powerful politicians been at the receiving end of the long arm of the law?

A more serious and salacious campaign targeted him for an alleged assignation with a Russian woman in a hotel in New Delhi. While social media posts initially claimed that a political leader was detained by Delhi Police along with the woman, without taking any names, Rajasthan BJP chief Madan Rathore and estranged minister Kirori Lal Meena did take his name while condemning the ‘baseless’ campaign.

The stoic silence of the deputy chief minister himself and of the Delhi Police have turned out to be more damning, though. Bairwa has not denied that he checked into the hotel or the slanderous charges made against him. A simple denial could have served to put a lid on the controversy. For the time being, the controversies have been buried until after byelections for seven assembly seats.

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A minister and a maverick

A doctor by training with an MBBS degree, Dr Kirori Lal Meena does not hide his disappointment. A six-time MLA, twice a member of the Lok Sabha and with a term in the Rajya Sabha, the medical practitioner believes he should have been given the departments of either home or health to manage as a cabinet minister. But he was asked to be agriculture minister instead.

Loyalty to the party does not allow him to say what many of his supporters articulate, namely that he would have made a better chief minister. But then he would have been no puppet.

Once the BJP lost all the three Lok Sabha seats that he was entrusted to ‘manage’ earlier this year, he resigned as a cabinet minister, stopped attending office in the secretariat, and sent back the official and staff cars. He also moved to his self-financed house in a housing board complex in Jaipur’s Mansarovar with his wife Golma Devi, who was elected as an Independent and served as a minister of state in the Congress government from 2008-13.

Dr Meena insists he is just an MLA but continues to sign on files as the minister. "That is only to avoid administrative delays and to keep the files moving,” he explains, but fails to convince many.

He had also stopped attending cabinet meetings until he recently arrived at one, triggering speculation that his differences with the party and the chief minister had been sorted out. However, he once again embarrassed the party by declaring that he was firm on his resignation, that he had attended the cabinet meeting only to draw attention to certain serious issues.

To top it all, the outspoken doctor drew the attention of the party and the chief minister to the registration racket in the Rajasthan Medical Council. He alleged that people who had studied only up to Class 12 had obtained registered medical practitioners' certificates through fraudulent means. Receiving no response from the government, he leaked the details and his letter to the media.

The state government was left red-faced when it was established that at least 18 such bogus doctors had indeed been employed by it. A tall leader of his community and with long experience in politics, it is no surprise that Dr Meena's resignation has not been accepted over the past three months. A section of BJP leaders and workers, however, are getting restive and feel that giving a long rope to the maverick politician is damaging the party and the government.