BJP, Cong in sitting-getting dilemma

POLL POT

This is coinage peculiar to Indian elections that came in vogue in the early 1990s, after Rajiv Gandhi came to power.

With a new generation of politicians coming into the fray after Rajiv Gandhi took over the reigns of power in 1984, the security of contesting from the same seat for generations ""sometimes from father to son, as in the case of GB Pant and KC Pant, for instance"" was seriously threatened.

Gandhi wanted to get new, younger professionals into politics to give the Congress a new look. So seats were reallocated and sitting MPs' nominations axed to make way for new faces.

There was no guarantee that a sitting Lok Sabha member would get the nomination. So after important party meetings, aspirants would ask each other (hopefully or hopelessly, as the case may be) "sitting-getting"? And if the answer was yes, it meant that the MP who had represented the seat last time would be the party's choice again.

The problem was of course, when the MP lost the seat. Seat allocation for the 1989 election became irrelevant when the Congress was thrashed at the hustings.

Rajiv Gandhi struggled to keep the party together. When the Chandra Shekhar government resigned then before the 1991 elections some benchmarks were fixed "" that MPs who had lost the previous election by a margin of less than 5,000 votes would automatically be renominated by the party to fight the same seat.

In some cases, MPs sought to shift to "safer" seats. So the sitting-getting formula was no longer valid.

Now after two elections and six years of being in power, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is faced with the same problem.

Should all sitting MPs be renominated? Or should a new face be given a chance on the premise that the party must be infused with fresh blood? This is a tricky proposition.

Independent verification could urge that the MP must be changed because he has not done enough work in his constituency, or because his victory was a fluke last time, or that he had represented the same constituency for far too long. But denying an MP a nomination means turning him into a rebel, the nightmare of all political parties.

The Congress has decided that 80 per cent of its sitting MPs will get the party nomination. The BJP will only renominate sitting MPs, in a few cases, changing their constituencies.

The logic is that if there is a wave in Atal Bihari Vajpayee's favour, even a scarecrow will win if he asks for votes in the name of Vajpayee. The sabotage factor in this poll will come from those disaffected in the Assembly polls.

This is a distinct factor in the Assembly polls in say, Andhra Pradesh. Preliminary reports say to overcome the incumbency factor, Telugu Desam Party chief N Chandra-babu Naidu, who is struggling to retain the chief ministership for the third time, could change the constituencies of up to 30 per cent of the sitting MLAs.

If this happens, newer and youn-ger people might come into politics. But the older ones will rebel.

Naidu's proven prowess at mico-management of constituencies through a variety of ways""money, bureaucratic intervention and political manouvreing""could neutralise this to some extent. But in doing so, he takes a calculated risk.