By Soroor Ahmed, TwoCircles.net,
A spat between the Leaders of Opposition in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha belonging to the same party––the BJP––makes an interesting story. Perhaps never in the Indian politics such a situation arose.
The ruling United Progressive Alliance is certainly going to capitalize on the growing infighting in the BJP, especially at the time when it itself is under pressure over the issue of scams.
But there is an individual within the Sangh Parivar, who is more than pleased by the wordy duel between the BJP leaders of both the Houses of Parliament. The man is none other than Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as such developments may pave the way for his rise in the party hierarchy.
Narendra Modi
True Sushma is nursing the ambition of being projected as the Prime Ministerial candidate in 2014 yet the truth is that both she and Arun Jaitley have inherent drawback. They have ended up growing further weak after the latest round over Reddy brothers.
Sushma alleges that Reddy brothers owe their induction into the B S Yeddyurappa cabinet to none else but Arun Jaitley. The other view is that it is none else but Sushma Swaraj, who played a key role in the baptization of the Reddy brothers into the party politics way back in late 1990s when she was taking on Sonia Gandhi from Bellary parliamentary constituency. Ever since then the three brothers did not look back and emerged as arguably one of the biggest mining mafia of the country. With two of the three becoming ministers in Karnataka cabinet and the third, an MLA, the Reddys have become both a liability and asset for the BJP down south. So whenever there is any trouble in Yeddyurappa government they are to be blamed.
The Reddys are known for all the wrong reasons. Opposition leaders in Karnataka allege that they head the mining mafia worth Rs 60,000 crore. Now in this era of scams the BJP is finding it excruciatingly difficult to wage a battle against corruption with Reddys in its rank.
It is in the process of getting rid of Reddys that the BJP––not just the Karnataka government––which is finding itself neck deep in trouble. The party has been split apart over the issue with Lal Krishna Advani choosing not to speak on the present tussle and Atal Bihari Vajpayee physically not in the position to do so.
With Pramod Mahajan killed by his own brother in a mysterious circumstances several years back and the regional satraps like Kalyan Singh, Uma Bharati and even to some extent Rajnath Singh, completely cut to size there is vacancy at the top in the BJP.
There is no dearth of people in the party, who would like to project the lone existing regional satrap of any reckoning, Narendra Modi. True Shivraj Singh Chauhan had also been leading the party quite successfully in Madhya Pradesh but he is not as high profile a leader as Narendra Modi, who unlike Yeddyurappa is facing no trouble in running his government for the last over a decade.
In this great hour of crisis within the party a large number of even softliners would once again drift towards the Gujarat chief minister. There may be some who may argue that Modi may not be acceptable to secular parties within the National Democratic Alliance.
There are leaders within the NDA who feel that it was the riots of the 2002 which led to the defeat of the Vajpayee led government in 2004. Similarly, during the 2009 Lok Sabha election the NDA lost in almost all those states where Narendra Modi campaigned. In Bihar it did much better and won 32 out of 40 Lok Sabha seats because Nitish Kumar kept him away from the state.
But all this is now ancient history. In politics things change so fast that one can not imagine. Throughout the early 1990s Lal Krishna Advani had the similar image. He was held responsible for the movement which led to the destruction of Babri Masjid and subsequent riotings which caused the death of thousands of people and destruction of hundreds of houses, shops and mosques all over the country.
Advani became a sort of political outcast for the non-BJP parties. But by 1998 all the secular parties, including Farooq Abdullah’s National Conference, Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress and Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam joined hands with the BJP. Initially, it was argued that they are doing so as the BJP has projected soft-liner, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, as the prime ministerial candidate.
But the truth is that it was just an excuse. Since Advani’s name figured in the Hawala scandal in mid-1990s, Vajpayee emerged as more suitable candidate to be projected as the Prime Minister.
Later the same secular leaders of the NDA had no problem working with the same Advani. Had the NDA won the 2004 election and replaced Vajpayee with Advani these secular parties would have no objection. This is simply because over the years Advani underwent an image makeover.
More than a decade later similar is the case with Narendra Modi. With a sizeable section of media working overtime to improve his image there would have been no problem for the others to join forces with him in the day to come.
It needs to be recalled that both Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley have no big constituencies of their own. Sushma is originally from Haryana and had non-RSS background––in fact she has Socialist background. Jaitley had an Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad background in Delhi University but can at best be the Rajya Sabha member.
With some ‘secularists’ within the NDA and even BJP trying to project––of course with the help of media––the Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar as the prime ministerial candidate the hardliner is busy working overtime to promote Narendra Modi.
The BJP has twin strategy to deal with Nitish. Notwithstanding all the protest the Bihar Chief Minister could not stop Narendra Modi from addressing a public meeting in Patna on June 13 last during the BJP’s national executive. Mind it, of all the BJP leaders who addressed Modi spoke for the longest duration and he expressed his views on all the national and international issues thus making it loud and clear that he is the man in waiting.
True whatever be the media hype about Nitish Kumar the latter cannot convert his image into votes even in the bordering district of neighbouring UP. In contrast Modi has much larger acceptability all over the country––it may be just after Vajpayee or Advani.
The story that Nitish may be the likely prime ministerial candidate of the NDA in 2014 is being kept alive in the media perhaps deliberately as the Sangh Parivar do not want to lose him.
Barring the natural allies––the Shiv Sena and Akali Dal––almost all the secular parties have left the NDA. If Janata Dal (United) too leaves, it would be a devastating blow to the BJP. Therefore, just to keep Nitish in good humour his name is repeatedly being projected by a section of media at the instance of the BJP.
True the Gujarat riots may have tarnished the image of the BJP in early part of the century. But it has provided Modi an excellent opportunity to emerge as the tallest Gen Next leader too. Just like the demolition of Babri Masjid was forgotten and forgiven for the sake of politics the Gujarat holocaust of 2002 would also be buried in the past. Modi like Advani may emerge as a big leader.