With Narendra Modi pulling an Obama on 95,000 people in Hyderabad and a few thousand others across India, one would imagine that the BJP will slouch back, heave a sigh of relief and watch with amusement as the party rides the Modi wave to success. The casualties in the party itself will possibly be a fair price to pay in the view of a resounding electoral success. The BJP has doggedly been following that route, systematically shoving anyone who comes in Modi’s way out of it.
The first significant casualty of the Modi ascent was Sanjay Joshi – then party president Nitin Gadkari’s poll manager. Joshi was shown the doors from the national executive of the party in June 2012 after Narendra Modi registered a quiet, but defiant protest with the BJP by not turning up an an important executive meet first and then refusing to campaign for the BJP in the Uttar Pradesh polls. The results of the latter were evidently unflattering – despite a change of power in the state, the BJP failed to make a dent on the Congress’ hold on the state with allies SP convincingly overthrowing the BSP government.
The alarm bells rang out loud in the party corridors and in a situation where no other BJP leader showed promise enough to stir country-wide following, the party quickly fell in line to appease Modi.
Joshi, a close aide of former BJP leader and former Gujarat chief minister Keshubhai Patel, who was also responsible for orchestrating Keshubhai’s victory in Gujarat after he was briefly replaced by someone else obviously stuck out as a sore thumb in Modi’s political ambitions. Though he was expelled for six long years following a sex scandal, Nitin Gadkari, the then BJP president brought him back in the party with an eye on the upcoming general elections as Joshi’s organisational skills were always considered above par. With his history with Keshubhai, Joshi naturally couldn’t be on the same table as Modi and Gadkari’s decision didn’t go down well with him.
When it was time for the BJP to choose its new President in 2013, Gadkari was eased out and Rajnath Singh handed over the reins of the party. While the reasons cited were reasonably tame and the new president was chosen immediately after Aam Aadmi Party went after Gadkari questioning his dubious business associations with the Purti Group, the message was clear – the ranks were being cleared for Narendra Modi.
In fact, Gadkari had made a statement saying he was fine with the party’s decision and that he will glad that he gets time to clear his name of all allegations being levelled against him. Gadkari and possibly BJP chose to scapegoat the UPA, saying the former BJP President’s exit as a move tp counter allegations being thrown at him by the UPA. Gadkari said in a statement: “I have committed no wrong or any impropriety either directly or indirectly. Yet, the UPA government has been making an effort to spread disinformation about me in order to hurt me and my party. I have always said that I am willing for any independent inquiry.”
It’s not coincidence that Modi was named the national poll campaign chief a few months later and the BJP’s 2014 polls strategy rely heavily on how well Modi clicks with voters across the country.
However, the BJP declared Gadkari the chief of the BJP poll campaign in Delhi Assembly elections. Delhi being an important constituency at all times and the possibility of the state polls weighing heavily on the parties’ fortunes in the national elections, make Gadkari’s role doubly serious. According to experts, Gadkari’s expertise has been sought to address the largely divided ranks of the BJP in Delhi.
Gadkari was told about differences between senior leaders and Vijay Goel. He was given reports about it. Since this infighting can seriously hurt party chances in the polls, Gadkari called the leaders and asked them to ensure better coordination.
While Modi’s importance in the BJP can’t be overstated, it is true that in his ascent to power, the Gujarat CM will have little time to straighten out the creases within the party – especially since he is the reason some of them exist. A party cannot survive on hero worship alone – it has to strategise and needs all quarters to connect with the voters. Because, like it or not, voters will judge a party more by its local leaders and their potential to deliver rather than Modi’s charisma. And an informed voter will inevitably doubt how much of Modi’s promises will trickle down to convincing action, if his party’s bedrock is in disarray.
This is where a person like Gadkari is needed in the BJP. He has been one of the strong background players that hold warring factions together. Like he has showed with his own exit, he possibly also has the talent to help nurse ego flare-ups as the party makes choices that best suits its prospects in national politics – choices that might not be in line with personal ambitions of all its members.
In fact Gadkari, who is close to LK Advani, has been credited with resolving Advani’s issues with the BJP enough to not make the party look vulnerable and divided in a poll year. He tells: My primary feeling was that the crisis should be resolved in the best way possible, in favour of the party and keeping Advaniji’s dignity in mind. Advaniji and Atalji are the founders of the BJP. The party is identified with them..
Also, Gadkari’s stint as a president gives him intimate knowledge about the state structures of the BJP making him an ideal person to drive state polls as the present president throws his weight behind Modi and the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
On the other hand, the BJP needs to pander to the likes of Gadkari to make sure not too many voices of dissent against Modi cfrom within the BJP end up surfacing in public. When a former president of the party expresses his dislike for its prime ministerial candidate, the political math goes significantly haywire. A party with too many fighting factions and too many clashes of interests can never make a smooth transition to governance and the voters will not take too much time to figure that out.
In fact Gadkari has said during an interview that the “party is bigger than an individual”. Gadkari said that Modi, like he himself and many others, is just a ‘worker’ for the party. “This party is not one person’s. It belongs to all of us and we all work together and equally for its success,” he said emphatically. While he doesn’t undermine Modi in the interview, he doesn’t subscribe to the idea that Modi might be the one who will turn the BJP’s fortunes around.
In an interview, he reiterates the fact that the BJP needs to rise above ‘personal arrogance, hopes and ambitions’ and dismisses rumours about Modi’s nomination as PM candidate as ‘hawa’ (air). He says: Who the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate will be is a decision to be made by the party president and the party’s parliamentary board. The media is speculating, creating hawa, all sitting at its desk.
Out of power for almost a decade, the backbone of BJP’s national poll campaign is not Modi – it is the several failures of the UPA, as Modi’s appeal to large swathes of non-urban voters in states other than Gujarat is still under a cloud. In a situation like that, a grudging Gadkari can easily throw the party off its tracks, hence, BJP needs to keep him bribed for a little more while.
