Between the Lines

How LK Advani’s latest blog hits the BJP hard

DELHI ~ Late on Tuesday night, on 7 August, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s media cell circulated a previously published article by Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley, titled, ‘The national parties haven’t lost their relevance’. The move, by the party’s propaganda machinery, was obviously necessitated by its 2009 prime ministerial candidate LK Advani’s latest (on 4 August ) blog post: ‘Speculations about Congress’s fate in 2014’. The post, while seemingly directed at fears within the Congress and anxieties of senior Congressmen, is actually an account of his own decline within the BJP and an admission that all is not well with the party.

‘In an informal chat with two senior Cabinet Ministers before the formal dinner, I could clearly perceive an intense sense of concern weighing on the minds of both these Ministers,’ writes the former Deputy Prime Minister and long-time wannabe PM. The blog post refers to concerns that two UPA ministers shared with him just before the farewell dinner for Pratibha Patil hosted by the PM. ‘In the sixteenth elections to the Lok Sabha, neither the Congress nor the BJP may be able to forge an alliance which has a clear majority in the Lok Sabha,’ Advani says the two ministers told him. ‘In 2013 or 2014, therefore, whenever the Lok Sabha elections take place, the government likely to take shape can be that of the Third Front. This, according to the Congress Ministers would be extremely harmful not only for the stability of Indian politics but also for national interests,’ he adds. Advani does not name the two ministers but offers his own view of the situation: ‘A non-Congress, non-BJP Prime Minister heading a government supported by one of these two principal parties is however feasible. This has happened in the past also. It would not at all be surprising if the next Lok Sabha elections yield a result which for the Congress may prove the worst in its history since 1952.’ While predicting that the Congress’ tally in 2014 will go down to less than 100, its worst performance ever, Advani writes that the anti-Congress mood in the country is to the direct advantage of the BJP.

In the last election, the Congress (at 206) won 90 seats more than the BJP. Using Advani’s argument, the BJP in the next Lok Sabha election will win at least 200 seats, and with the Congress winning half that number, there will be less than 250 seats to be shared by nearly 40 other parties. Even with 200 plus seats if the BJP cannot get its allies to accept its party’s prime ministerial candidate, then obviously Advani is trying to suggest that the party has made the wrong choice. That choice, of course, is Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Ask a party leader whether Modi is the party’s prime ministerial choice for the next election and he will launch into a familiar monologue about how the BJP is a disciplined party with an endless list of leaders who are capable of becoming PM, but it is only the Parliamentary Board of the party that will decide on who the next man after Advani will be. Yet, this hesitation in taking names is confined to words alone. In action, the party has given in to Modi’s attempts to project himself as the party’s top choice for 2014. Beginning with the BJP’s Mumbai National Executive meeting in May this year, both the BJP and Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh have been sending clear signals that Modi is the party’s next PM candidate. Modi was allowed to break the BJP’s self-proclaimed party discipline and demand the ouster of his baiter Sanjay Joshi from the National Executive. The party top brass simply obeyed the command.

Modi—while addressing public meetings outside his state or tweeting—compares his administration to that of Manmohan Singh’s. He speaks more often of the failures of the UPA Government at the Centre than of the states. Sample this tweet on 31 July, the day three of India’s five power grids failed: ‘With poor economic management, UPA has emptied pockets of common man; kept stomachs hungry with inflation & today pushed them into darkness!’ Even his congratulatory messages to players winning medals at the Olympics are now on behalf of India and not as a state chief minister. Advani, who refuses to retire even at 84, has not come to terms with the fact that his term as the BJP’s poster boy has come to an end. He cannot get the RSS to go back on its decision asking him to give up his prime ministerial ambitions. He can no longer influence his party to stop bending backwards to the demands of Modi and BS Yeddyurappa, but he can at least embarrass all those who do not support his political ambitions through an occasional post on his blog.

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Jatin Gandhi