For Buta Singh (remember him?), it's a battle for prestige

by Gajraj Singh

Jaipur: From being the blue-eyed boy of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv to an unwelcome outsider for the Congress - what a fall it has been for Buta Singh! Close to three decades after the Operation Blue Star, the chief trouble-shooter for the Gandhis in the simmering Punjab then remains in political wilderness, fighting his own electoral battle all alone.

In the aftermath of the military operation in the Golden Temple Buta Singh had been handpicked by Indira Gandhi to reconstruct the Akal Takht and Harmindar Sahib in the Golden Temple. He was considered the right choice for the job because he was the Union housing minister then and also a Sikh who knew what had to be done. It was no easy task. Operation Blue Star had wounded and outraged the whole Sikh community and there was too much anger in the air to negotiate with first.

The Sikh Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) was against the government’s decision to getting the holy structures repaired by government contractors working under the supervision of Buta Singh and Buddha Dal Nihang, Baba Santa Singh. The SGPC held that the gurdwaras are built by kar seva by the faithful, not by paid employees and it is the job of holy men not government servants. The government ignored the protest and speeded up the construction work. Buta Singh requested a number of Sikh saints to come forward and help in the reconstruction work, but all of them refused to cooperate.

The high priests of the Sikh Takhts declared President Zail Singh and Home Minister Buta Singh as ’tankhahiyas’ (religious offenders or renegades) and ex-communicated them from the Sikh fraternity unless they apologised and accepted the punishment given to them at the Akal Takhat. President Zail Singh later apologised and was pardoned. But not Buta Singh.

“When she (Indira Gandhi) realized that because of Operation Blue Star, it would be difficult for me to contest from Punjab, she identified a constituency for me in Rajasthan’s Jalore and also a constituency for Balram Jakhar in Sikar. We had to move out of our home turf because of the insurgency in Punjab. It was the order of Indiraji to contest from Jalore and to this date I am contesting from here having won the seat four times,” reminisced Buta Singh, a post-graduate in English literature from Bombay University.

He contested from Jalore, a reserved seat in Rajasthan, in 1984 and made a grand debut securing close to 67 percent of votes. It did not matter that he was an outsider. With such a beginning, he decided to make Jalore his political abode. It became his permanent home. In 30 years since, Buta Singh has contested from Jalore eight times and won the seat on four occasions - once as an Independent. However, Jalore has not been kind to him in recent times. In 2004, he lost to BJP leader Bangaru Laxman’s wife B Susheela. In 2009, the Congress refused him a ticket. He fought as an Independent and lost by a narrow margin of 50,000 votes. The official Congress candidate finished third.

“It’s the small margin of 50,000 votes that encouraged Buta Singh to come and contest again. But the party denied him ticket as the Congress leaders Ashok Gehlot and CP Joshi thought someone else should be tried because Jalore had become a general seat now. This annoyed Buta Singhji and he is fray as an Independent,” said a political observer.

Buta Singh may be out of favour of the Congress, but he certainly is no pushover. He has a strong following among the the SC and ST communities in the constituency. In Jalore, Ahore, Bhinmal and Raiwara assembly constituencies both the communities have a significant presence and have the potential to tilt the result in favour of any candidate. Buta is banking heavily on the 4.5 lakh votes from these communities. Besides, in the last 30 years he has made many friends outside this constituency too.

He is up against BJP’s Devji Patel and the Congress’s Udai Lal Anjna, an outsider - he comes from Chittorgarh. It is a battle not so much for political relevance for Buta Singh as it is for prestige. He has to prove a point to the Congress.