What looked like developing into a triumphal procession for Mrs. Gandhi has been halted at least for the time being. It has been halted in Samastipur by Mr. Karpoori Thakur. Thus whatever the outcome of the by election to the Lok Sabha in Fatehpur in U.P. next Sunday, the Janata victory in Samastipur gives its leadership some respite and Mrs. Gandhi time for reflection, the need for which could not have been more emphatically brought out than by her own strange statement that Mr. Sanjay Gandhi had never quit politics. Neither of these points would have been in order if the by-election in Samastipur had preceded and not followed the one in Chikmagalur, or alternatively, if the latter had been treated by the Janata leadership as a routine affair. Samastipur is as safe a constituency for the Janata as it is possible to find. Mr. Karpoori Thakur had annexed it in March 1977 by over three lakhs and the Vidhan Sabha constituencies in it had duly elected Janata candidates in June last year even though by much smaller margins. It would therefore, have only been natural to expect it to return Mr. Thakur’s nominee, Prof. Ajit Kumar Mehta. But though Chikmagalur was equally a safe constituency for the Congress (I), the Janata leadership’s decision to convert the by election there into a mini-referendum on the emergency had invested Mrs. Gandhi’s triumph there with undue importance. In this context a Congress (1) victory in Samastipur would have been a severe blow for the Janata, even if a self-inflicted one, and helped create the impression that it was on the way out.
Mr. Thakur has managed to avoid that catastrophe for the party. He had staked his own future on the outcome of the by-election there and his personal contribution to Prof. Mehta’s election has on all accounts been decisive. This is especially so because on the face of it the caste arithmetic was not particularly favourable from his point of view. For if the upper castes, numbering about 35 per cent of the population and the Harijans and Muslim’s accounting for another 25 per cent, had made common cause against him, his candidate could not have won. Apparently he was able to split this alliance system which Mrs. Gandhi has been trying to build and consolidate. But while the victory in Samastipur can help maintain the Janata’s morale, it cannot boost it in a significant way. That only victory in Fatehpur can do. The caste arithmetic there, too, favours the Congress (1) candidate, Mr. Prem Dutt Tiwari, since the Harijans, the Brahmins (Mr. Tiwari’s own community) and the Muslims, who are said to have been further alienated from the Janata on account of the riots in Aligarh, constitute about 55 per cent of the population and, therefore, of the electorate. The Janata candidate happens to be a Muslim and may, therefore, be able to split the Muslim vote. But to what extent in view of recent events in Aligarh? The odds against the Janata are clearly pretty high. But that is precisely why victory there can restore its image and self-confidence as Samastipur cannot. This is a test for Mr. Charan Singh and his protégé, Mr. Ram Naresh Yadav, the U.P. chief minister. For Mrs. Gandhi also the stakes in Fatehpur have risen after the defeat in Samastipur.