Aditi Phadnis: A dark horse for UP

PLAIN POLITICS/ Why is Satyavrat Chaturvedi so important to the Congress in Uttar Pradesh?

Is it a bird? Is a plane? No, its Satyavrat Chaturvedi" is what Congressmen, especially from Uttar Pradesh, began telling each other when earlier this month, Congress General Secretary Ambika Soni announced that at last she had the clearance from the Congress President to unveil the changes in the All India Congress Committee (AICC).

Amid fresh blood inducted in the organisation, former spokesman of the party, one Satyavrat Chaturvedi, Soni announced, had been made party general secretary in charge of UP.

Leaders in the party, half envious, half dismissive pursed their lips and shook their heads. How could a Congress politician "" a mere MLA "" from Madhya Pradesh who lost the 2004 elections by a large margin, be expected to revive the party in a state like UP? Sympathisers outside the party were less kind. "Satyavrat who?" they asked. Chaturvedi's name was clearly not top-of-the-mind recall.

So who is Satyavrat Chaturvedi and why is his appointment so important ? In the Congress command and control setup, party general secretaries in the AICC are given charge of a state and are expected to liaise with the state unit of the party, informing their activity with their own wisdom and the benefit of control from a distance.

Insiders know that former general secretary and current Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad's stock went zooming up because as general secretary in charge of Andhra Pradesh, he was the one who oversaw Y S Rajashekhar Reddy's election campaign, ticket distribution, helped him choose campaigning issues and helped keep rivals like N Janardhana Reddy at bay with the judicious use of the carrot and the stick.

A good Congress general secretary can actually revive a moribund party unit, and help the chief minister (or leader of opposition) make the right moves. This is generally aided by his access to the Congress president and his capacity to make forceful representations on behalf of the state in his charge.

Equally, a bad general secretary can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And when you have the chief minister (or leader of the Opposition) on collision course with an AICC general secretary, then more often than not, the party's goose can be deemed to have been cooked.

The corridors of the Akbar Road office of the party still resound with the sighs of former chief ministers and Pradesh Congress Committee chiefs telling stories that begin: "if only we'd had X or Y as general secretary".

After the death of M G Ramachandran, chief minister of Tamil Nadu in 1987, the Congress made a disastrous choice of allies in Tamil Nadu largely on the advice of then general secretary in charge of Tamil Nadu, Buta Singh, plumping to go with the Janaki Ramchandran faction of the ADMK rather than with Jayalalitha in the 1989 assembly election.

It paid the price for this decision for the next ten years as it dwindled away into nothingness in the state. In more recent history, the quick turnover of general secretaries for Delhi "" a state where the party has a government "" indicates all is not well. In short, a general secretary is a crucial mentor of the party unit or government in a state and wields more power than most people realise.

Against this background, consider Satyavrat Chaturvedi's appointment and the challenge for the Congress in UP. In the 2004 Lok Sabha elections the Congress managed to get just nine seats out of 80. In terms of assembly seats, the party forfeited its deposit (that is, it got less than 16.6 per cent of the vote) in 254 assembly constituencies out of 403 assembly seats.

This means not just that the party lost on average one out of every two seats, but that it has a presence that amounts to less than 16 per cent of the votes cast in one out of every two seats. In terms of votes polled by it in 2004 general election, if assembly elections are held today the Congress cannot hope to get more than 48 seats "" compared to 160 won by the Samajwadi Party.

Obviously, the responsibility for the revival of the party, given the Samajwadi Party's troubled relationship with the Congress, rests as much with Chaturvedi as with the PCC chief, Jagdambika Pal. But whether Chaturvedi is up to it, is the question.

Chaturvedi contested and lost the Khajuraho Lok Sabha seat in the 2004 elections by a large margin. This in itself is not surprising, because the Congress lost Madhya Pradesh. What is significant is that this happened despite the friendly relations that BJP chief minister Uma Bharati is charged with having with Chaturvedi.

The Congress leader's son contested the Vidhan Sabha elections held late last year and while the BJP put up a relatively weak candidate against him, he still lost the elections. Khajuraho is Bundelkhand, virtually UP. So how can a man who could not win his seat and could not ensure his son's victory, expect to revive the party's fortunes in UP, is what the Congress is asking itself.

Maybe the secret lies in a statement Uma Bharati made just two days ago. At a press conference, Bharati tried to highlight the crisis in the Congress: "Just look at the irony", she said. "You have a two-term-chief minister and architect of several successful political experiments, Digvijay Singh, as general secretary. Alongside him, you also have a former MLA who wasn't sure if he would get a Lok Sabha nomination, Satyavrat Chaturvedi, as general secretary. So who is Digvijay Singh? Uski auqat yehi hai kya (is this all he's capable of)?"

Madhya Pradesh Congress sources say Chaturvedi and Digvijay Singh have never seen eye to eye, which is why Uma Bharati has cultivated him on the assumption that an enemy's enemy is a friend. Chaturvedi is wellspoken, educated and the son of a veteran associate of Indira Gandhi, Vidyawati Chaturvedi, known for her proximity to the Gandhi family.

So the signal that the average Congressman is getting is that Chaturvedi's appointment is more to do with the settling of scores between the high command and Digvijay Singh, still a powerful Congress satrap, than the revival of the party in UP.

While this may be only the partial truth, Congressmen are still scratching their heads "" is Satyavrat Chaturvedi going to be the ultimate fall guy?