No Modi, Agrees BJP

As the BJP surrenders to Nitish Kumar’s demand that Narendra Modi and Varun Gandhi be kept away from Bihar’s electoral arena, the implications.

Political upsets rarely get more embarrassing than this. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has not only left the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with nowhere to look, he has done so at a time that could ruin BJP poster boy Narendra Modi’s bid to grow out of Gujarat and assume national prominence.

Notwithstanding assertions by a host of senior BJP leaders that the party has the right to decide who all should campaign for the upcoming Assembly polls in Bihar, it is Nitish Kumar—of the Janata Dal-United (JD-U)—who has taken the final decision for the saffron party. And the decision is that neither Narendra Modi nor the BJP’s controversial Pilibhit parliamentarian Varun Gandhi will address any election rally in the poll bound state.

“The decision that was arrived at in Nitish Kumar’s meeting with senior BJP leaders at Patna (on 11 July) is final, and any deviation from this would be treated as a breach of agreement and would be detrimental to the NDA,” says a senior JD-U leader considered close to the Bihar CM—who is in power in Patna with additional support from the BJP.

According to sources, Nitish Kumar extracted a clear-cut promise from the BJP leadership at that meeting that neither of the two Hindutva icons of the party would play any role as the October-November 2010 election approaches.

The 11 July meeting, held at the residence of state BJP president CP Thakur, was attended by the BJP’s Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley, Bihar BJP in-charge Ananth Kumar, his deputy Dharmendra Pradhan, party spokesperson Ravishankar Prasad, Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi, and some other state party leaders.

After the meeting, while Chief Minister Nitish Kumar chose not to speak to the press, BJP leaders tried hard to hide their capitulation, saying that both parties would contest the forthcoming Assembly polls together, and that the exact details of the electioneering would be finalised by a state committee of the BJP sometime later. “Campaigners from the BJP will be announced at the right time,” declared Ananth Kumar, right after the meeting in Patna.

Just a few days earlier, the same Ananth Kumar had invited Narendra Modi to campaign in Bihar, and party spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy had quickly endorsed this move. In a burst of sovereign righteousness, even party president Nitin Gadkari had asserted that the BJP would take its own decision on whether the Gujarat CM and the Pilibhit MP would participate in the campaign. “We have the right to decide which all leaders of the BJP should campaign in Bihar… We will decide it at the appropriate time,” Gadkari had said, about a week before Nitish Kumar divested the party of this right.

Nitish Kumar’s decisiveness amounts to a personal setback for Narendra Modi; for, it casts doubt on his national-level acceptability as a leader, which assumes larger significance in the context of the BJP’s crisis of leadership at the top. Unless the BJP can muster a majority in Parliament on its own, the Gujarat strongman’s all-India ambitions depend on the support of other constituents of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), of which both the BJP and JD-U are parts. That Modi does not kindle faith among non-BJP constituents has been a running argument within the NDA, and Nitish Kumar’s attitude is seen as a test case.

The yielding of the BJP to the JD-U marks the end of a bitter tug-of-war that followed the publication of an advertisement during the BJP national executive meet at Patna in June, showing Nitish Kumar in a hand-clasp with Narendra Modi. The Bihar CM blew his top, objecting to the advertisement, and the war-of-words that followed seemed to threaten the four-and-a-half-year old coalition government in the state—not to mention the 14-year-old alliance between the two parties. Nitish Kumar abruptly cancelled a dinner he was scheduled to host for BJP leaders in Patna, and gruffly returned the relief money of Rs 5 crore that the Gujarat government had sent Bihar during the Kosi floods of 2008.

Nitish Kumar’s wariness of Narendra Modi is not new. Ever since the two parties formed a coalition government in November 2005, the JD-U leader has consistently kept his distance from the BJP leader, scuttling every move of the BJP to have the Hindutva mascot make speeches on Bihar’s soil. During the campaign for the Lok Sabha election last year, Nitish Kumar made it quite clear to the BJP that Narendra Modi was unwelcome in his state.

Public perceptions of even vague affinities with Modi could upset the electoral calculations of the Bihar CM, who has positioned himself as a well-wisher of Pasmanda (backward) Muslims in Bihar, voters thought to be as allergic to Modi as Muslims elsewhere. This being the scenario, what better way than turning Modi away to signal that his alliance with the BJP does not strengthen the Sangh Parivar in Bihar? 

Apparently, what the JD-U wants to do is tame the saffron forces instead. Such a strategy, believe JD-U leaders, is crucial to neutralise the advantage that is enjoyed by their secular rivals in the state: Lalu Prasad’s Rashtriya Janata Dal and Ramvilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party, apart from the Congress. So, each time the BJP turns the arclights on Modi, the JD-U rushes to shove him aside—at least in Bihar’s electoral arena.

Leaders of both parties acknowledge that Modi is not the only contentious issue between them. “The two parties will soon start negotiations over seat sharing in Bihar,” says a senior JD-U leader, “Both the BJP and JD-U have different perceptions about their respective strengths. Besides, delimitation has changed the profile of several constituencies, thus necessitating a fresh seat-sharing formula.”

In the last Assembly election, the JD-U had contested 139 seats of the total 243, while the BJP fielded candidates for 102 seats. On the remaining two seats, the two parties had fielded independent candidates since a decision could not be reached on time. How will the constituencies be split this time round? An agreement is still to be struck. But, by holding ‘development camps’ in 103 Assembly constituencies, the BJP has already signalled its expectations. The JD-U has indicated little, but a rude jolt for the saffron party would be no surprise.

BiharNarendra ModiNitish Kumar