Vaghela announces third front, to back non-BJP, non-Cong candidates

After almost a 19-year hiatus, the eternal rebel and former chief minister Shankersinh Vaghela recommenced his quest for the third angle of a political triangle in electorally bi-polar Gujarat. Vaghela on Tuesday announced support for the ‘Jan Vikalpa Morcha’, a newly formed political platform that is envisioned to take on both the ruling BJP and the principal opposition, the Congress whose legislature wing he headed until July this year.

As critics pooh-poohed and supporters harped on the veteran Gujarat politician’s ability to pull a political rabbit out of the electoral hat, the man himself remained non-committal on many points stubbornly refusing to open his cards for the state elections due in December this year.

Vaghela who began his political career with the Jan Sangh through the RSS doorway continued with it through it’s amalgamated journey with the Janata party to re-emerge as the BJP. He rebelled soon after the BJP first came to power in Gujarat on it’s own steam in 1995 with party veteran Keshubhai Patel as the chief minister.

It was his differences with Narendra Modi, then a state party office-bearer more than veteran Patel that saw him rebel but return following a truce brokered by Atal Bihari Vajpayee that saw Keshubhai replaced with Suresh Mehta and Modi banished out of Gujarat.

However the truce did not last and Vaghela quit the BJP after pulling down the Suresh Mehta government to become chief minister at the head of a regional outfit, the Rashtriya Janata Party(RJP) with Congress support. After a series of manoeuvres, gave up the regional party experiment to merge it into the Congress following a drubbing in the 1998 elections that saw Keshubhai return to power.

The union textile minister in the first Manmohan Singh led UPA government in 2004, Vaghela was the leader of the Congress opposition in the Vidhan Sabha when he quit the party in july.

Vaghela draws inspiration from the Janata Morcha(Peoples Alliance) that was first formed to take on Indira Gandhi’s Congress in 1971 but failed miserably.

It was a coming together of the Bhartiya Jan Sangh,Socialist party and the Congress(O) and was christened the Grand Alliance. However as the Janata Morcha it won a majority in Gujarat with Babubhai Patel as it’s chief minister.

However after Emergency was clamped in the country in 1975, the government was sent packing and it’s ministers and leading lights jailed.

It is this successful Janata Morcha that seems to be playing at the back of his mind as he seeks a possible resurrection of the experiment in the name and nomenclature of the Jan Vikalp Morcha.”

“It is only a political front and not a political party”, Vaghela was at pains pointing out.