L K Advani’s sixth yatra seems to have been undertaken under an evil star. While its ostensible purpose was to cleanse public life of corruption, it was generally seen as a gambit for projecting himself on the national stage and thereby remaining in some future race for prime ministership. The yatra proved accident-prone, as the bus got stuck under a bridge, and then malfunctioned; senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders fell ill — probably after ingesting carbon monoxide. Matters got worse when party workers in Madhya Pradesh were caught handing out cash to local reporters in return for favourable coverage of the yatra — thereby also establishing that newspaper proprietors are not the only people in the media who indulge in the practice of “paid news”, journalists do the same. The final puncture of the bus’ tyres has come with the arrest of the former Karnataka chief minister, B S Yeddyurappa of the BJP, on a corruption charge relating to land deals. With the party now having its counterpart of A Raja of the Dravida Munnettra Kazhagam and Suresh Kalmadi of the Congress (both of whom are already in jail in Delhi), any attempt by Mr Advani to point to the United Progressive Alliance while talking of corruption is not likely to appear convincing.
This may be just desserts for the BJP, which on the issue of corruption has sought to hunt with the hounds and run with the hares. It has supported Baburao Hazare and Ramdev in their campaigns on the Lok Pal issue, but ignored if not undermined the work done by the Lok Ayukta in Karnataka. Meanwhile, in Gujarat, Narendra Modi (who also played his cards recently to project himself on the national stage) refused for nine long years to appoint a Lok Ayukta, without the BJP finding a contradiction between this and its support for the Hazare campaign. The Bellary brothers, key players in the Karnataka BJP, are at the heart of the mining scandal in the region. The moral, if there is one, is that you must be different before you project yourself as being different.
