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print versionSigns of BJP central leadership weakening
Up to early this year, PM Modi, who in effect is also the party high command, had seemed invincible but recent losses have emboldened the party’s regional leaders
by Bharat Bhushan
July 1, 2021
The waning success of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah as vote-catchers may have contributed to a weakening of their leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). This is suggested by the fratricidal rivalries surfacing in BJP-ruled states.
If they could brush off electoral defeats in Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh (in 2018), those in West Bengal and Kerala proved to be their nemesis. The Modi-Shah duo bet their shirts on the West Bengal elections and lost. Their biggest catch, Mukul Roy, has already done ghar wapsi, and several legislators elected on the BJP ticket are apparently waiting to cross back to the Trinamool Congress (TMC). This to-an-fro between the BJP and TMC may also repeat itself in Tripura.
Perhaps the first admission of concern about Modi’s ability to swing an adverse election was expressed in the BJP’s decision in March 2020 to replace Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat with Lok Sabha MP Tirath Singh Rawat. Now with six months before the Assembly polls, even Tirath Singh Rawat seems to be in trouble.
Nowhere is the weakening of the central leadership of the BJP more evident than in Uttar Pradesh. Prime Minister Modi could not effect changes in Yogi Adityanath’s cabinet, which would not have been difficult earlier. Instead, Adityanath’s denial of a cabinet position to Modi-loyalist Arvind Kumar Sharma pushed the central leadership to save face by appointing him as the seventeenth vice-president of the state BJP.
Two other developments reflect the intensity of the internecine party struggle in UP.
A local newspaper sent 30 reporters to uncover distress burials due to Covid-19 along a thousand km stretch of the Ganges banks across 27 districts of UP. Their explosive reports and photographs exposed Adityanath’s mismanagement of the pandemic. Usually, regional newspapers avoid taking positions that might affect the flow of government advertisement. So while welcoming the news expose against Adityanath, sceptics may be forgiven for wondering whether powerful forces in the BJP establishment backed the reportage. Nor has the uncharacteristic expose invited retaliation from the normally testy Adityanath government.
Following Adityanath’s recovery from a challenge to his leadership, details of a land scandal have surfaced. Land for constructing the Ram Temple at Ayodhya is said to have been purchased at more than twelve times its initial price. Accusations of financial mismanagement are directed at the Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra, a trust tasked by the Union Home Ministry to construct the Ram Temple. The relevant land registry papers could not have become so widely available to the media and Opposition politicians without a nod and wink from the state administration. How else would it have come into the public domain that part of the land was Construction Committee. Would it be far-fetched to see the unfolding of this land scandal involving people close to the top leadership of the BJP as a retaliatory shot at Adityanath’s detractors?
New rallying points are emerging around the challengers in the BJP-ruled states, and this can only happen in a disciplined party like the BJP if the centre is perceived to be weak. The challenge to BS Yediyurappa’s chief ministership in Karnataka has been made to stand down for now. But the contenders were perhaps only able to mount a bid to unseat him because they thought the central leadership could be pushed. Rebel activity in Madhya Pradesh has seen Shivraj Singh Chauhan fighting off a challenge from his deputy, Narottam Mishra. He is ostensibly supported by Kailash Vijayvargiya, another ambitious BJP leader in the state.
In Rajasthan, the failure of "Operation Sachin Pilot" showcased the collapse of the Modi-Shah duo to cut Vasundhara Raje to size. In neighbouring Gujarat, the differences between Chief Minister Vijay Rupani and the state unit president CR Patil have been out in the open. In Himachal Pradesh, the central leadership had to step in to prevent the differences between Chief Minister Jairam Thakur and Minister of State for Finance Anurag Thakur from spiralling out of control. Even in Kerala, where the party failed to win a single seat in the recent assembly elections, BJP leaders are levelling charges at each other of political sabotage and misappropriation of election funds. Allegations include involvement in a highway heist of Rs 3.5 crore during the elections.
Up to early this year, Prime Minister Modi, who in effect is also the party high command, had seemed invincible. He appointed chief ministers of his choice from Haryana to Himachal Pradesh. He no longer seems to be able to rule the roost.
(The writer is a Delhi-based journalist)
