Would Arjun have become PM if he had quit in 1992?

NEW DELHI: In less than a decade starting 1987, three political stalwarts revolted against their leadership from within the ruling camp. While those of V P Singh and Chandra Shekhar succeeded in taking them to the top, Arjun Singh’s floundered.

Looking back on that turbulent phase in politics, one wonders whether Arjun Singh, too, would have made it to the big league had he resigned from Narasimha Rao’s Cabinet on the day of the Ayodhya demolition to lend more credibility to his rebellion.

Singh did resign as HRD minister from the Union Cabinet but two years too late. It was ironic that Rao’s most strident critic on the Ayodhya question waveredat the decisive moment. Two days before the demolition of the structure, Singh was in Lucknow on his way to Ayodhya to study the situation. Surprisingly , he decided to return from Lucknow without making it to Ayodhya. Reason? During a half-hour meeting, chief minister Kalyan Singh prevailed upon him to call off the Ayodhya trip.

“I am not disappointed at all, as I do not mind entertaining the sincere request of the chief minister,” a TOI report from Lucknow quoted him as saying on December 4, 1992.

He kept raising his voice against Rao’s failure to protect the Babri structure for the next two years before finally resigning on December 24, 1994. But by then, he had lost the momentum. The halo of martyrdom eluded him. Realising that the big moment had passed him by, Rao did not wait long to throw him out of Congress. On February 7, 1995, Singh was expelled from the party for six years.

Singh teamed up with another party veteran, N D Tiwari , to float a breakaway faction — Congress (Tiwari) — but the outfit was a nonstarter right from the beginning . The single-minded determination of V P Singh was missing in him.
Had he resigned on December 6, 1992, throwing the challenge to Rao at the moment he looked most vulnerable , it could have been a different story altogether. Politics , they say, is all about sensing and catching the big moment.