New Delhi, Oct. 1: The BJP seems keen to put the Narendra Modi saga behind and get on with the task of “party reconstruction” lest a mid-term Lok Sabha was sprung on the country.
At the centrepiece of the BJP’s mandated “tasks ahead” was the upcoming Uttar Pradesh election. Several speakers at the national executive session, that concluded today, stressed that if the BJP did not put up a “half-way decent showing” in the state —decoded, the phrase meant emerging as the second largest party if not the largest — it might as well forget wresting power in the next general election.
On a larger scale, the leaders also stressed that the BJP needed to project a “clean” self-image, appear united and enlarge its basket of allies.
If yatra-bound L.K. Advani said the UPA was in a “suicidal mood” and the BJP need do nothing to “disturb it”, Lok Sabha Opposition leader Sushma Swaraj cautioned that as the principal Opposition party, it fell on the BJP to be “ready for this challenge” and more importantly, “learn from the Congress’s mistakes”.
“We must maintain a clean image and unity in the party and keep our allies together. This is how we can fulfil our duty as an Opposition party and also be prepared to form an alternate government,” she said.
While there were no protests against rebel Gujarat cop Sanjiv Bhatt — who was arrested yesterday in Ahmedabad for alleged fabrication of evidence — as there used to be in the past in such gatherings whenever the chief minister was rapped by the Centre or needled by a known baiter, privately many members felt by not attending the session, Modi had “over-reached” the “limits of defiance”.
In their own way, the leaders signalled to Modi that his writ needn’t prevail all the time. His bete noire Sanjay Joshi was specially invited for the post-lunch session today to brief on Uttar Pradesh. So was Uma Bharti, who is also camping in the state after her re-induction. Although Joshi was not given a designation, sources said he was functioning as the principal organising secretary and getting the nuts and bolts of the fractured party apparatus together.
Members from outside Uttar Pradesh claimed they got an impression that Joshi was going down to the BJP’s micro entities, resolving factional fights at every level and “making every worker feel important”.
While Joshi won plaudits, a member from Bihar said: “It (Modi’s absence) has done him no good. He could have consolidated his position within the party by coming to Delhi after the ‘harmony mission’. But he was assertive to the point of being illogical. His inflexibility got reiterated.”
If Modi’s absence wrought damage enough, sources said what compounded the harm was the inability of both Advani and Modi to issue a clear statement that might have “set to rest the unsavoury speculations” — at least for the moment. “None of the two protagonists gave clarifications. This is not good for the BJP,” a source said.
Among the strategies the BJP was working upon in Uttar Pradesh was to regroup its main vote blocks of the upper castes and the most backward castes. In its heydays, this coalition fetched for it nearly 80 per cent of the Lok Sabha seats in the state. The second was to not project a leader for fear that the move might polarise the voters along caste lines.
The third was not to have truck with any of the major parties even if meant “sacrificing” power in the state. “If we have a coalition government in Lucknow with the BSP or Samajwadi, we might as well forget getting Lok Sabha seats because our traditional voters will reject us in anger,” an Uttar Pradesh leader said, adding, “For us, 2014 is the goal.”
