CALCUTTA, 16 April 2004 — The guns on India’s western border are silent but India’s Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha has pressed the panic button. Sinha is jittery because he is unsure of retaining Hazaribagh, his sprawling Lok Sabha constituency in Jharkhand, for the third time. He won the seat in 1998 and 1999 but he faces a seemingly impossible task this time.
Sinha is battling not only a heavyweight fielded jointly by the opposition to prevent the division of non-BJP votes but also his own partymen who are leaving no stones unturned to humiliate him.
Sinha was not availale but his spokesman confirmed that “some of our partymen and leaders are trying to sabotage the minister’s electoral prospects”.
The biggest thorn in Sinha’s flesh is Mahavir Vishwakarma. As sitting Hazaribagh MP, he was cajoled into vacating the seat for Sinha in 1998. He was promised a seat in the Rajya Sabha but the BJP did not keep its word. So he demanded the party ticket from Hazaribagh last month, only to be rebuffed.
Now Viswakarma is in the fray as an independent ginving Sinha sleepless nights.
Backing Vishwakarma to the hilt are two sitting BJP MLAs — Loknath Mahato and Devi Dayal Kuswaha — representing assembly segments of the Hazaribagh parliamentary seat. They have the blessings of K.P. Sharma, a veteran BJP leader who was recently expelled from the party for opposing Sinha’s candidature.
And apparently backing them is a powerful general secretary of the BJP in the party’s national headquarters who has a score to settle with Sinha. Moreover, Sinha faces a very formidable challenger in the opposition’s consensus candidate: Bhuneswar Mehta who belongs to the CPI but is backed by Rashtriya Janata Dal, Congress party, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and Marxist parties.
