BJP shifting gear as alliances hold key

Alliance is the name of the game”. This is the essence of political developments over the past one month that has seen an upbeat BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi suddenly on the backfoot and a spring in the step of Rahul Gandhi, who was seen as a laggard till the Gujarat polls six months back.

With just 11 months remaining for the Lok Sabha polls, the million-dollar question is whether the Prime Minister, and also BJP chief Amit Shah, follow the Atal Behari Vajpayee line of accommodating allies for the bigger fight or adopt a “BJP vs the rest” model, giving a secondary position to its allies. Take it or leave it.

The dramatic developments in Karnataka, which saw the installation of a JD(S)- Congress government, and the shock defeat in the Kairana Lok Sabha bypoll, the third such setback in Uttar Pradesh after the Gorakhpur and Phulpur defeats, have set the ball rolling in the ruling party on “which way to the front?”.

The NDA had taken a backseat since Mr Modi became the first BJP leader to win the party an absolute majority, with 282 seats in the 543- member Lok Sabha, in May 2014, a hundred more than the best done by Mr Vajpayee in 1999 on the back of the Kargil conflict.

Now the BJP suddenly appears to be changing tack, with Amit Shah holding a two-and-a-half-hour much-talked-about meeting with Shiv Sena supremo Uddhav Thackeray on Wednesday night at “Matoshree”, the Thackerays’ residence in Mumbai. While no details of the meeting, in which Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis was also present, are known so far, the duration of the talks suggests they were wide- ranging and that the BJP could be out to win friends once again.

Mr Modi and Mr Shah had kept away from “Matoshree” for long, unlike in the days of Atal Behari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani, who had always maintained a close rapport with Sena founder Bal Thackeray.

The meeting is signpificant as Mr Modi and Mr Shah had left no opportunity to humiliate the Shiv Sena in the past four years despite being its oldest ideological ally and has been its “elder brother” in the state till four years back.

Only time will tell whether the two saffron allies will bury the hatchet. Wednesday’s editorial in Saamna, the Shiv Sena’s mouthpiece, did not speak much highly about the Amit Shah visit. It had also made it clear that the Sena would go solo — fight the coming general election on its own. It is a stand taken by the Shiv Sena sometime back.

The apparent change in the BJP’s stand has not happened all of a sudden. In the Palghar Lok Sabha bypoll, the Shiv Sena sprang a surprise by suddenly jumping into the fray, “hijacking” the BJP candidate and giving it a run for its money. The BJP candidate barely scraped through, sending the signal that the 2014 Modi wave had long vanished.

Mr Thackeray’s appeal during the campaign for Palghar that all parties, including the Congress and the Communists, should come together to avoid a “calamity” is by far the strongest statement against the Narendra Modi-led BJP by any ally and showed that the NDA is in tatters, at least in Maharashtra. What made matters worse for the BJP is the announcement by NCP chief Sharad Pawar that he would work to unite all anti-BJP forces in the state. Mr Pawar, who has a good rapport with Congress president Rahul Gandhi, had been instrumental in securing 42 out of 48 seats for the Congress in the 1998 polls in Maharashtra when a Sena-BJP government was in power there.  

Maharashtra has seen the largest anti-Modi lineup so far.

Simultaneously, the BJP has also plans to reach out to its another old ally, the Shiromani Akali Dal, with Mr Shah scheduled to meet Parkash Singh Badal and Sukhbir Badal this week.

Besides, it has started to put the NDA house in order in Bihar with a meeting of the alliance in Patna that is due soon. The dramatic entry of JD(U) leader and chief minister Nitish Kumar in the alliance last year has set the cat among the pigeons. Besides, the “Sushasan Babu” is literally going through a bad patch, despite being the tallest of leaders of the alliance.

This is happening at a time when Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD is on an upbeat mode, winning election after election under a young Tejashwi Yadav, who misses no opportunity to say that he is with Rahul Gandhi and the Congress at the national level.

Neighbouring Jharkhand is also facing problems despite being ruled by the BJP-AJSU coalition. It suffered a big jolt in the Silli and Gomia bypolls with the united Opposition proving its strength by winning both seats.

The Jharkhand Mukti Morcha was the only outfit from the non-BJP camp to have fielded its candidates, and managed to retain both the seats. There are more than indications that the Opposition will swim together in 2019 to keep the BJP at bay.

In Tamil Nadu, the BJP’s plans to ride piggyback on the AIADMK could prove to be a disaster as the fortunes of the ruling party there are sliding by the day while the dramatic political developments in Karnataka would substantially restrict the saffron sway in the state once hailed as the BJP’s gateway to the South.

What has happened is that the NDA is now seen as a “Not Delivering Alliance” by its allies in the wake of the recent Lok Sabha and Assembly bypolls, where the BJP could win only one Lok Sabha and one Assembly seat out of four Lok Sabha and 11 Assembly seats. In journalism, it is said that a reporter is only as good as his/her last story. The same applies to politics, or more so, as winning alone counts.

The BJP’s argument belittling the bypoll verdicts across the country on the plea that these are fought on local issues and don’t choose a CM or Prime Minister appears to be simply bravado.

The installation of the JD(S)-Congress government in Karnataka followed by the Kairana experiment shows that the rules of the game are changing.

A “strong leader” narrative that had carried the day in 2014 for Mr Modi and the BJP is suddenly giving way to what is being perceived as the difference between promise and performance.

That the good governance issue is going against the BJP in UP just one year after a landslide victory is clear from the fact that ganna (sugarcane) triumphed over “Jinnah” and danga (riots) in Kairana.

The mending of ways by the BJP top brass has begun as it is not only alarmed over the Opposition’s unity moves but also due to a serious erosion of support in several states, including Uttar Pradesh, which has been the “jewel in the crown”, as well as Maharashtra and Bihar.

One of the reasons Atal Behari Vajpayee lost the game in May 2004 was that the Congress had built a better alliance while the BJP did not care even if half a dozen allies had left as it got caught in its own web of “feel good” and “India Shining”.

However, a redeeming feature for the BJP is the leadership of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, who have the untiring energy of playing till the last ball and also of delivering a googly.