Is it the season for comebacks in the BJP? Only yesterday, the party cleared the decks to take back Jaswant Singh, who had been expelled nine months ago. Now, party patriarch LK Advani has taken along the rebellious Uma Bharti on a flight to Raipur, fueling speculation about her possible return to the BJP.
Uma's possible return to the party has been talked about from before she quit the outfit she had floated, the Bharatiya Janshakti, in March this year. But Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and some RSS leaders are said to be opposed to her return to the party.
Bharti was sacked from the BJP in 2005. But for over a year before then, she had begun to lose favour in a party not willing to take her tantrums anymore. In November 2004, Uma was suspended from the party when she stormed out of a meeting called by then BJP president Advani. On national television, she dared Advani to take action against her. The party also issued a show-cause notice. But the RSS intervened, Uma apologised, her suspension was revoked and she was appointed member of the BJP's national executive.
Months later, Uma rebelled again, this time against the appointment of Shivraj Singh Chouhan as the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh. She was expelled after she topped it all with a scathing attack on the BJP leadership in her reply to a show-cause notice.
The fall from grace had been swift and brutal. This was the same woman the BJP had projected as its candidate for Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister only two years before and won handsomely, uprooting a well-entrenched Digvijay Singh of the Congress. Uma Bharti triumphantly became the state's first woman chief minister in 2003, much to the chagrin of many within her own party.
Her stint was cut short when she stepped down following an arrest warrant being issued against her in a Hubli riot case in August 2004. She installed her loyalist Babulal Gaur as Chief Minister, but her days of trouble were nigh. Gaur was soon replaced by Shivraj Singh Chouhan who has reportedly said he will quit if Bharti comes back to the BJP.
Uma's days in exile were not easy. Without the BJP backing her, her attempts at resurrecting herself as a mass leader came to naught. She has reportedly made repeated efforts to get back to the party fold. In 2009, Bharti campaigned from the BJP platform in the Lok Sabha elections, but did not contest.
