The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
Late night bus-ride to airport and a plane to Khajuraho
IT WAS pitch dark when the buses — two of them — set off from a village in Gandhinagar.inside,thebjpmlas,nearly 55ofthem,satcluelessasthebusessped — first past Keshubhai’s residence, then past Raj Bhavan where they thought they were headed.theyfinallygotoffatahmedabadairport and were taken to a waiting Damania Airways plane.
“Now leave,” Shankersinh Vaghela recalls telling the MLAS he was “safeguarding”. That September night in 1995, Vaghela, then a BJP MP from Godhra and now with the Congress, hadeffectedastunningcoup,thebiggestsuch the party has seen.
“Allofusgotontothecharteredplane,still cluelessaboutwhereweweregoing,untilthe stewardesssaid,‘weareflyingtokhajuraho’,” says Dilip Parikh, who was among the senior leaders of that rebellion and who went on to become chief minister in the Vaghelafounded All India Rashtriya Janata Party (RJP) government.
In the 1995 Assembly elections, the BJP won 121 of 182 seats, the first time it had won a majority in the state. At a town hall meeting in Gandhinagar in March 1995, Keshubhai Patel’s name was proposed for the CM’S post, with Narendra Modi, then national general secretary (organisation), said to have thrown his weight behind Patel. But Vaghela’s supporters had hoped he would be CM and that town hall meeting kicked off a rebellion. “Shankersinh noted that only those close to them (Modi and Keshubhai) were picked as ministers,” says Parikh, who runs his plastics business and is no longer active in politics.
In September 1995, Keshubhai left for a tour of the US, naming Ashok Bhatt as caretaker CM. “Before leaving, he asked me if I had a problem with Narendra Modi. I told him, ‘I have a problem with you. When you come back, you may not be CM’,” says Vaghela.
He claims 105 of the 121 MLAS were disgruntled and came to him. “I told them, leave thisgovernment.areyouready?”hefirsttook them to his village Vasan in Gandhinagar, whereafewmlasleft.“(nowministerinstate Cabinet) Babu Bokhiriya’s wife came to fetch him,thenjaspalsingh(formeripsofficer)left. Aboutadozenothersleft,leavingsome55behind,”saysvaghela,nowleaderofopposition in the Assembly.
The MLAS were later taken to the home of Haribhai Chaudhary (now MOS Home in Gujarat) in Charada village in Mansa taluka in Gandhinagar. There too, a few left. “Mansukh Vasava (now BJP MP) was among those who left from the backdoor,” says Vaghela.
Parikhrecalls,“themlasclosetotheother camp brought their goons and we were attackedwithstones.haribhai’swife,bhikhiben, then got the villagers together and told them: ‘Have you all worn bangles? They are our guests...’ So the villagers got together and chased them away.”
It was then that Vaghela decided to take the MLAS out of Gujarat, but with BJP governments in Maharashtra, Delhi and Rajasthan, it was Madhya Pradesh, where Congress’s Digvijaya Singh was CM, that seemed the safest.
Talking of the night the MLAS were driven to the airport, Vaghela says the original plan was to fly out the MLAS at 3 pm. “But we got late convincing everyone. Finally, when we reachedtheairport,werealisedoneofaircraft tyres was flat. That was fixed but then I learnt there was no night landing in Khajuraho so I spoke to the then aviation minister and got gas lights on the runway to facilitate the landing.whentheplanefinallytookoff,ibreathed a sigh of relief,” says Vaghela.
Vaghela claims he did not visit the MLAS while they were in Khajuraho for a week.
Meanwhile, in Gandhinagar, the rebellion hadsetoffalarmbellsamongthecentralleadership. Senior leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee and then Rajasthan CM Bhaironsinh Shekhawat flew in to Gandhinagar to convince Vaghela to get the MLAS back. “I told them I want Narendrabhai moved out of Gujarat,” he says.
The MLAS, who had been asked to pack clothes for 2-3 days, were kept in a five-star hotel, two to a room. “There were no mobile phones or 24x7 news then. There was this half-hour news slot on Doordarshan, which flashed news about us. Uma Bharti, who was BJP MP from Khajuraho, and Kushabhau Thakre (then vice-president of BJP) were among those who came to the hotel to meet themlas,”saysavaghelaconfidantoncondition of anonymity. This confidant, who calls himselfthe“manager”ofthecoup,wasposted in the same hotel in Khajuraho to ensure the safety of MLAS.
There were many MLAS such as Jay Narayanvyaswho,thoughunhappywiththe leadership,didnotgotokhajuraho.“onceyou are voted on a symbol, you must not defect,” saysvyas,whowentontobecomeministerin Keshubhai and Narendra Modi Cabinets.
Back in Khajuraho, the MLAS held meetingseveryday,butasparikhsays,theyhadthe time of their lives. “We spent our time playing table tennis, swimming, listening to music. We were told to relax and enjoy,” he says.
Vaghela claims the entire episode cost around Rs 10 lakh. “The chartered aircraft must have cost around Rs 4-5 lakh and if you countrs2-2,500perroompernight,thenthe hotelstaymusthavecostrs4-5lakh,”hesays.
Ingandhinagar,vajpayeeandothersenior leadersheldhecticnegotiationswithvaghela. One of these days, the MLAS got a call at their hotel,at3am,askingthemtoflybackat6am. They were taken to the circuit house in Gandhinagar where the compromise proposal was tabled. “‘No Shankersinh, no Keshubhai’,saidvajpayee.sotwonameswere put forth Suresh Mehta and Kashiram Rana,” says Parikh. Finally, Mehta became CM.
Though six of Vaghela’s men got ministries, the bitterness stayed. A former minister in the later Modi government in Gujarat says,“thevaghelacampwasalwaystreatedas anoutcaste.theywerenicknamed‘khajurias’ (thosewhowenttokhajuraho),theoneswho stayed with Keshubhai were called ‘Hajurias’ (fromjihuzooriorflatterers),andtherestwere called ‘Majurias’ (the no-where people).”
In 1996, during a meeting to felicitate Vajpayee, who had gone on to become prime minister, the factionalism in the party came out in the open once again when Vaghela’s men were assaulted — senior co-operative leader and MLA, the late Atmaram Patel, was strippedofhisdhotiandanotherleader,dattaji Chirandas, was nearly set ablaze.
After this episode, Vaghela rebelled again. But when he lost the 1996 general elections fromgodhra,bjpexpelledhimandheformed therashtriyajanataparty(rjp).with48rebel BJP MLAS, and with support of the Congress, he staked claim to form government.
“I was sworn in as CM in October 1996,” says Vaghela. But a year later, after a fallout with the Congress, Vaghela made way for Parikh as CM.
In March 1998, Parikh sought dissolution of the Assembly on Vaghela’s behest. In the Assembly elections that followed, the RJP got only four seats and, by end of 1998, Vaghela merged his party with the Congress. In the 1999 Lok Sabha elections, he won on a Congress ticket from Kapadvanj. Many of his followers returned to the BJP fold.
“I told them, you are free to join BJP because I cannot ensure you anything in the Congress... Then, the party was not in power either in Gujarat or at the Centre,” says Vaghela.
Theincident,consideredoneofthebiggest coups in the BJP, “finished Vaghela’s career in the BJP and ended his credibility”, says a former minister in the Modi government.