Hours before he left for a week-long tour of the US, BJP president Rajnath Singh signed some documents on Friday evening that had been modified multiple times over the last fortnight, the last ones made as late as earlier that day. It was the most important announcement he was making since anointing Narendra Modi the chief of the party’s poll campaign committee and in the interest of seeming a united party, all influential sections had to be taken into consideration.
BJP leaders had been waiting eagerly for over a month, with some of them concerned about their personal fate and in what capacity their names would figured in the core campaign team that Modi will have.
A larger segment of players had hoped to see the strategy of the party and who would lead them against the UPA and Congress. Multiple meetings among the members of the party’s Parliamentary Board, a series of informal meetings and a shifting deadline had heightened the suspense and excitement over the decision. After all, the creation of committees, mostly related to logistics had never gone through such a process before.
However, after the announcement, the question that some are asking within party is whether the 20 committees that have been formed will give an edge to Modi or the BJP over the ruling Congress? They are also wondering whether the earlier idea of having four zonal committees, headed by top leaders Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Nitin Gadkari and Venkaiah Naidu was a better idea than having over a dozen and half committees with varying responsibilities?
The idea for forming more a smaller, result-oriented set of committees had been considered after the 8 July parliamentary board meeting. A presentation to this effect was made by senior leader Venkaiah Naidu, but was shot only hours before Friday’s parliamentary board meeting.
No party leader, at least at this stage, is expressing any dissidence over the 2014 plan but in private express genuine concern.
As it stands there is a central 11-member election campaign committee headed by Modi. This committee has all the members of Parliamentary Board and three chief ministers, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Raman Singh and Manohar Parrikar.
The two Leaders of opposition in Parliament, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley are members of the committee, as are former party presidents, Murli Manohar Joshi, M Venkaiah Naidu and Nitin Gadkari. Also a part of the commitee if General Secretary (Organisation) and RSS representative Ram Lal are the members. This will be the all important committee to work out a campaign strategy.
“The committee will work under guidance of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, LK Advani, Rajnath Singh and under chairmanship of Narendra Modi,” Ananth Kumar, party general secretary and a member of the Parliamentary Board, said
But Modi’s poll campaign secretariat has perhaps been made far too big to work as a cohesive team. A total of 20 committees, packed with 98 leaders, surprised many in the party.
There are some who believe that these committees were always around in some form or the other. The difference being that in this case a certain amount of hype was attached to the announcement and all the committees came into existence in one go. All these committees will report to both Modi and Singh.
The BJP’s decision on the committees does not reflect any smart innovative thinking that could bear Modi’s stamp. This long list of 20 groups is more in keeping with the move to appease all. The time taken and delays, shows that in effect it is more of a consensus forming exercise than the choice of a person who is face of the campaign and has been entrusted with the task of winning the elections for BJP.
Modi has been made to work with strength and weaknesses of the existing pool of talent at the party headquarters. And rather than have have a full fledged secretariat or camp office of his own, Modi’s secretariat functions from different rooms and cubicles at 11 Ashoka Road .
The party’s senior general secretary Ananth Kumar and youngest general secretary Varun Gandhi will come together to organize 100 rallies in different parts of the country, which will kick off in August. The most curiously watched will be the Hunkar Rally, incidentally first ever to be addressed by Modi in Patna on 27 October.
Interestingly, as the elections approach both Kumar and Gandhi will have to take up responsibilities in their respective states, Karnataka and UP, as the most prominent faces of the party. How they will find a balance between the two responsibilities remains to be seen.
Having a manifesto committee is one necessity and has been assigned to wise old men’s club of the party. The younger ones in this committee will either just fill the required vacant positions or participate in book keeping.
Friday’s announcements also cement the rehabilitation of former party president Nitin Gadkari. Though he was not given charge of the Rajasthan poll campaign, as sources said he was promised, but he was given charge of the Delhi elections and has been assigned the task of preparing the vision document for the party. Gadkari also has charge over some other committees and will oversee the functioning of a committee headed by Amit Shah to rope in young and first-time voters.
The allocation of worthwhile work to Gadkari was party patriarch LK Advani’s initial demand when talks regarding Modi’s formal elevation had began within party around two months ago. Gadkari then played a significant role in resolving the crisis after Advani’s resignation.
Navjot Singh Sidhu, who had some grudges with the party’s leadership will now have some work, including being a deputy to Gadkari while supervising poll preparedness for Delhi.
There are many in the BJP who hope to see the unveiling of some innovative ground work and campaigns by Modi. That could happen in parallel to the organised official structure. A good strategy is one where everything isn’t revealed. For now, Modi is playing the role of a good friendly leader, trying to make everyone in the party feel wanted. He needs them to portray that he could work within laid out structure of the party. They, in return, need Modi to help the party defeat the Congress and make the BJP single largest Party in next parliamentary election.
