Self-Goal Parivar

The BJP has worked hard this past week to make a spectacle of itself

LUCKNOW/NEW DELHI ~ It has been a busy week for the leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).  Party leaders, big and small, have been on their toes: from attending a two-day national executive meeting of the party at Lucknow on 3 and 4 June, to organising an ill-attended satyagraha (headlined by a widely criticised dance performance at Rajghat by Sushma Swaraj, the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha) against the police action on yoga guru Baba Ramdev’s camp on the night of 5 June. Despite all this, the party’s senior leader and former deputy prime minister LK Advani found time to lead leaders of (what remains of) the National Democratic Alliance to meet President Pratibha Patil, demanding a special session of Parliament on the issues of corruption, black money stashed abroad and the police crackdown on Ramdev’s fast in Delhi. Meanwhile, party president Nitin Gadkari took time out to induct former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Uma Bharti back into the party and announce that she would add spunk to the BJP’s electoral bid in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections next year.

On the face of it, the principal Opposition party is hard at work setting its house in order, and preparing a strong attack against the Congress-led UPA government for its misdemeanours. But look closely and you see the BJP is still very much the party in disarray it has been since its drubbing in the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, characterised by the policy of ‘act first, think later’ that has become its modus operandi in the past few years. “The Congress has been scoring one self-goal after another but then so have we,” confesses a senior leader of the party, adding that the party has not been able to cash in on the mistakes of the UPA.

Take first, the case of its support for yoga guru Baba Ramdev. Even before the party brass met for its two-day national executive meeting in Lucknow, president Nitin Gadkari had shot off a letter to the Prime Minister extending support to Ramdev’s fast. Gadkari sought a categorical assurance from the Prime Minister that Ramdev’s demands would be met within a specified time. Perhaps, Gadkari had forgotten that the issue of black money stashed abroad was actually raised in the run-up to the 2009 elections by Advani. A party leader says the BJP national president wrote the letter before consulting others in the top leadership. “We should have first decided whether we are ready to deal with those who are with Ramdev. We don’t know who he represents, and what he seeks by raising these demands,” says the leader. A day after he had written to the PM, Gadkari issued a statement saying the demand was originally the BJP’s and not the Baba’s. 

Party leaders are still at pains to explain that the party isn’t outsourcing its role to the likes of Ramdev, nor is it any less emphatic in drawing the people’s attention to the issues of corruption and black money.  The party says it wants to support whoever speaks out on the issue of corruption. “The issues raised by Baba Ramdev concern us all. Advaniji raised this issue in 2009, and the Congress laughed and said it was an election stunt,” says party general secretary Ravi Shankar Prasad. Party leaders say that Advani’s demand forced the Congress to include the issue of acting on black money salted away in tax havens abroad and promise action within 100 days of forming the government. What they do not have answers for is why the BJP did not put pressure on the government when those 100 days had passed without the government acting. Moreover, the BJP leadership failed to act against its own chief minister, BS Yeddyurappa, facing corruption charges in Karnataka. Insiders say that the party’s support of Ramdev was a kneejerk reaction and if it weren’t for the way the government  made a botch of the situation and the post-midnight police crackdown on his people, the party would have had to face embarrassment. 

Incidentally, when the government wrote to the BJP president seeking the party’s views on the Lokpal Bill, Gadkari wrote back to finance minister Pranab Mukherjee saying the party would rather reserve its comments till the Bill was ready to be placed before Parliament for discussion.  ‘Sovereignty lies with the Indian Parliament in the matter of legislation. Therefore, views of various interested groups have to be placed before Parliament or political parties which are represented in Parliament through their members…Expecting political parties to give their views to a drafting committee comprising  civil society representatives for acceptance or otherwise would be upsetting the constitutional propriety where parties, parliamentarians and Parliament have the last word,’ Gadkari wrote to Mukherjee on 2 June. Contrast this with what he wrote to the PM only two days ago: ‘The government should invite Baba Ramdev for a meaningful dialogue before it is too late and assure him that an effective foolproof mechanism on the lines suggested by him will be put in place immediately.’ He did not think it was necessary for the mechanism suggested by the yoga teacher to be put before Parliament.

Meanwhile, the two-day meet in Lucknow was a lacklustre affair. The party felt it was enough to pass a resolution to the effect that it would not align with Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party, the Samajwadi Party or the Rashtriya Lok Dal to declare that it is in the reckoning for the 2012 Assembly elections. Gadkari, in his opening address, reminded the party’s leaders and cadres of former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpa-

yee’s words: ‘The road to Delhi is via Lucknow.’ Vajpayee’s message was that the party would have to do well in UP before it could wrest power at the Centre. Ironically, the party leadership decided to induct former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Uma Bharti in Delhi two days after the national executive, and impose her on UP. Gadkari announced after feeding Bharti laddoos at a press conference at 11 Ashoka Road, the party’s national headquarters, that she would strengthen the party in UP. Bharti was sacked from the party in 2005 after her revolt against Advani in full view of TV cameras at the same venue. The BJP hopes that the party will gain in the state from her Lodh (an electorally significant OBC caste group) background and saffron robes. Kalyan Singh, a local Lodh leader and former chief minister who was re-inducted before the 2009 elections, has already failed to do the job for the party.

Bharti says she will bring Ramrajya in UP “which is the land of Ram and roti, Mandal and Kamandal”. The conditions under which Bharti revolted haven’t changed much: infighting continues to plague the party, and the party brass, divided into camps, is in no position to address it.  An internal BJP survey in UP, meanwhile, shows it lagging far behind the BSP and the SP, but also shows anti-incumbency at play. “People are looking for alternatives,” says a member of the party’s National Executive. “At the national level, we hope to do a Jayalalithaa. Whenever someone attacks the UPA, the natural alternative is the BJP,” he reasons. The electorate, though, might want the party it chooses to play a more active role rather than lie on its back and extend support to whoever shouts slogans against the incumbent government.

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Jatin Gandhi