By Faraz Ahmad, IANS
New Delhi : Spurred by the Congress-Left tiff on the India-US nuclear deal, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is looking for new allies as it prepares for what it believes will be a snap general election.
BJP leaders admit that the party’s ties with its 2004 allies are not in the best of health. And it will be near impossible to think of taking power without valuable allies who can add to the BJP’s vote-catching strength.
The BJP has set up a five-member panel consisting of Murli Manohar Joshi, M. Venkaiah Naidu, Arun Jaitely, Sushma Swaraj and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi to look around for allies for the next Lok Sabha elections.
Although the next parliamentary contest is due only in 2009, there is intense speculation that it might be held earlier, perhaps in 2008, because of the uncertainty caused by the Left-Congress clash over the India-US nuclear accord.
Asked about the visible differences with allies like the Shiv Sena and the Trinamul Congress, Naqvi told IANS: “Yes, it is a setback that even existing allies like Trinamul and Shiv Sena have distanced themselves from the BJP.”
But he claimed in the same breath that BJP president Rajnath Singh had spoken to Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray and “today they are back with us”.
He refused to indicate which new parties the BJP was trying to woo to its National Democratic Alliance (NDA) but made it clear that it did not rule out an alliance with any of its past partners.
“Today the political scene is changing fast. Now secularism-or-communalism is no longer an issue. Parties like the DMK, PMK or Lok Dal who till yesterday were with the NDA are now with the UPA (the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance ).”
The BJP’s three major allies today are the Akali Dal, the Janata Dal-United and the Biju Janata Dal (BJD). The Shiv Sena remains an ally but the once cosy relations are now rocky – caused by its refusal to back BJP presidential candidate Bhairon Singh Shekhawat.
And any parting of ways by the Shiv Sena is bound to give the BJP sleepless nights in a major state like Maharashtra. The BJP would also be happy to sail with the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu, theTelugu Desam Party in Andhra Pradesh and, if possible, the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh. The four states account for 209 of the Lok Sabha’s 545 seats.
The BJP has also finalised its panel of candidates in nearly half the states in the country.
The BJP leadership met Friday evening here and asked its state units to gear up for early parliamentary polls.
Arun Jaitley told the media later: “The BJP is now in election mode and will be preparing for early elections, both politically and organisationally.”
Naqvi had told IANS earlier too that the party’s “organisational” preparations for elections are on.
“Though a formal announcement of candidates will be made only at the appointed time after the poll schedule is announced by the Election Commission, each state unit has been asked to finalise a panel of candidates soon,” he said.
The BJP is this time paying special attention to the choice of candidates for the Lok Sabha.
“There was a time about 10 or 15 years ago when the candidate’s standing mattered only 10 percent whereas his success depended 90 percent on his party’s image and ideology. That situation has undergone a very big change,” a party leader explained.
“Now 50 percent success can be credited to the image and standing of a candidate and only 50 percent to the party.”
And despite dissidence in the Gujarat BJP, the national leadership is solidly standing behind Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
Said Naqvi: “Modi is a very tall leader and his acceptability among the common people is very high. He has done tremendous development work in the last five years.”
Asked why then there was so much anger in the BJP against him, he said: “Today no party can claim to be free from dissidence. In a democracy dissidence is natural because no leader can meet the aspirations of all party members. But Modi is such a tall leader that neither the Congress nor any other leader can match his popularity.”