Uma Bharti
The days of the fiery-even sexy-sanyasin are over. An 'unwell' Uma Bharti arrived in Bhopal to a tumultuous welcome of burning effigies, anti-sloganeering and sulking party leaders including former chief minister Kailash Joshi and sitting MP S.C. Verma whose ticket to Parliament had been snipped by her. The pretext: with a bad back, she could not campaign on the untarred roads of Khajuraho, a constituency she has represented four times. But her arrival has added colour of sorts to the otherwise staid, safe bjp seat. Her rival, Congress Seva Dal president Suresh Pachauri, is not only exploiting the local vs outsider issue but having fun deriding her claims of physical discomfort while travelling on village roads: "Isko to dhachka lagat hai, ek dhachka yahan bhi dai do (The poor lady feels the jolts, so you too give her one)."
Still, as she travels in a maroon, well-equipped Tata Safari along the Bhopal-Ashta highway, huge crowds gather for her meetings, even braving power cuts and rain at night. The glamour of a young sanyasin who can move people with powerful oratory remains intact in the rural belt. And that works as a tonic for her. But she is worried that "Pachauri will divide the constituency on communal lines and I will be blamed". Funny she should complain, as the polarisation of the nearly three lakh Muslim votes has benefited her party in the past as it swept four consecutive elections. The trouble is that Pachauri-a Brahmin-may influence a sizeable number of the two lakh Brahmin voters and another one lakh Kayasthas who have hitherto been firmly on the bjp side of the fence. Khajuraho or Bhopal, bad back or good, that elections are still fought on caste and community lines may be the most important lesson to emerge from this round in the capital of Madhya Pradesh.
