New BJP Team : Notable Inclusions and Exclusions
August 19, 2014
It goes without saying that there is a strong stamp of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the newly constituted team of BJP office bearers. The thrust on youth, the induction of the 70-year-old Karnataka strongman BS Yedyurappa as vice president (Yedyurappa had been brought back to the party fold just before the recent General Elections only on Modi’s insistence and is the only septuagenarian in Shah’s team), are more than enough indicators.
But wasn’t it expected considering that Shah himself is a Modi protégé? Yet, on second thoughts, why should he remain a rubber stamp president of a ‘cadre-based’ party where even a ‘chaiwala’ can emerge as a top leader of the masses?
Crucial Aspects of Shah’s New Team
Before we dwell more on the issue, let’s have a critical look at the two crucial aspects of Shah’s new team and its implication on the Modi government.
Look at the omission of Varun Gandhi from the new team. Did he really fall prey to Modi’s policy against nepotism after his mother and Union minister Maneka Gandhi sought to promote him as UP’s next chief minister? Or was he omitted because of Modi’s policy of not allowing two family members to hold important posts? In either case, the clout of Modi on Shah’s team is evidently clear.
Another important factor that impacts Shah’s team is the unambiguous Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) influence — Murlidhar Rao, and Ram Lal from the previous team have been retained as general secretaries and former RSS spokesperson Ram Madhav too has joined their rank while V. Shatish and Shaudan Singh remain joint general secretaries. Together they do represent a ubiquitously formidable RSS face of Shah’s team!
Can this be a coincidence considering that Modi himself had been an RSS pracharak who was deputed to the BJP in 1987 to take care of the organisational matters of the party first at the state level, and thereafter, at the national level? A parallel can be drawn here with Vajpayee, himself an RSS swayamsevak. But as prime minister, Vajpayee had managed to keep the Sangh at bay. But the same is not expected of Modi who doesn’t face any compulsion of coalition politics as the BJP is well in majority in the Lok Sabha.
How Democratic is the Cadre – Based BJP?
Can we safely assume that the new team BJP is enough indication that Shah, as the BJP president, would prefer to work under the shadow of Modi? Given the powers that he may command as the party president, why wouldn’t he demand more autonomy to function?
We know that the BJP President was handpicked by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the role. Was that rather unusual in a cadre-based party which has since been all about one individual – Modi?
Modi and Shah are both from Gujarat. Shah served him as a junior state minister when Modi was the chief minister of the state. We know it was Modi alone who appointed Shah as the poll strategist for Uttar Pradesh – India’s biggest and most politically sensitive state. Once Shah delivered, Modi again pitched for him as the party president.
Can, we therefore call the BJP president Amit Shah an alter ego of Prime Minister Narendra Modi? Or in other words, can we assume that Modi is running the BJP’s party affairs by proxy?
The above questions are significant given the fact that the BJP takes pride in its ‘inner-party democracy’ to distinguish itself from the ‘dynastic’ Congress. Yet, we cannot say that that the democratically elected BJP presidents are as charismatic also. Can we ever compare Sonia Gandhi as Congress President when her party was in power, with her BJP counterparts – Bangaru Laxman, Jana Krishnamurthy and Venkaiah Naidu when the BJP ruled the nation?
While Sonia was an imposing party head whose supremacy could never be challenged by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, the same could never be said about the BJP presidents. They were no challenge to the authority of the party’s prime minister and the deputy prime minister as well during the earlier National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government. None of the BJP presidents who held office during that period, could match the public stature of the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee or for that matter even deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani. As a result the party leadership vacillated between a moderate Vajpayee and a hardliner Advani. Yet Vajpayee was astute enough to prevail upon his detractors in the party as well as in the government.
But hasn’t Modi, unlike Vajpayee, seemingly neutralised the Advani factor in the party? This does reflect in the new BJP team too.
The only BJP president, who could emerge out of the shadow of the trinity of Vajpayee-Advani-Murli Manohar Joshi, has been Rajnath Singh. Yet, when the BJP came to power, he has been assigned a much larger role to perform as the Union home minister in Modi’s cabinet – a suitable reward for his efforts!
Shah, with a controversial past, could never have reached thus far without the support of his mentor – Modi. From the ignominy of being incarcerated in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case, to the glory of being the President of the ruling party – he has seen it all within a spate of the last few months. His match winning performance in Uttar Pradesh during the general elections – that catapulted the BJP to the seat of power with absolute majority – has given him an aura of invincibility. His partymen now hail him for his organisational skills and strategic planning.
The Prime Minister does have a knack of picking horses for the courses. In the 1998 Gujarat assembly election too, he had sprung a surprise by handpicking a 28-year-old Bharat Pandya, the then state BJP office secretary, to contest against the then chief minister Dilip Parikh from Dhandhuka assembly constituency. Pandya created history by defeating the sitting CM.
Till today Pandya, now the Gujarat BJP general secretary feels obliged to Modi for the break that the latter provided to him.
Wouldn’t Shah too feel the same way? If so, then the Prime Minister is well in control of the party affairs too….a marked departure from the Manmohan Singh days. Should anyone complain?
Comments
Post a Comment