|
BJP rising |
 |
B. I. Saini
While the Congress is busy setting up one committee after another to revive the party’s eloctoral fortunes, the main opposition, the BJP already appears to have given shape to the basic contours of its strategy.
Realising that there are no immediate prospects of the party coming to power at the Centre on its own, the BJP has been busy making efforts, both openly and behind the scenes, to get more allies on board its ship for the major electoral battle coming up next year-Lok Sabha elections 2009. Apart from the seven states-
Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Chattisgarh-where it is ruling on its own, the party is in stable relationship with the dominant or at least major regional outfit in Punjab, Maharashtra, Orissa and Bihar. In these states, the BJP gameplan appears to be to consolidate the National Democratic Alliance, NDA, and, if possible, get a bigger share of the cake in the shape of the number of Lok Sabha seats to fall in its kitty.
In other states, the BJP is scouting for new allies, dominant players or otherwise. That explains the efforts being made by the BJP in Uttar Pradesh to rope in Ajit Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal. Even though it knows, like others, that Ajit Singh is a slippery customer prone to making last minute switches, the BJP is reportedly trying to bring the RLD on its side. In West Bengal, the BJP prospects hinge on a tie-up with Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress, which is riding high on account of the Left Front’s inept handling of land acquisition in Singur and Nandigram.
In the south, after coming to power in Karnataka, the BJP is trying to revive links with Chanderbabu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party in Andhra Pradesh and Jayalalithaa’s All India Anna DMK in Tamil Nadu.
On the programme and policy front, the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Lal Krishan Advani has been soft-pedalling the party’s Hindutva agenda and talking of inclusive development and of reaching out to the deprived sections, including the Muslims. That is why at the BJP national executive meeting held recently, he ignored the hardline Hindutva pitch sought to be reactivated by party president Rajnath Singh.
The BJP not speaking openly or aggressively about Hindutva issues-Ram temple, Article 370, Uniform Civil Code - however, does not mean necessarily that the party will not pursue them, if it comes to power at the Centre. The RSS, which provides the dedicated workers, who run the party’s election machinery, is ensuring that BJP leaders, who emerge from the Sangh parivar, play a major role in the governments formed by the party. After Narendra Modi in Gujarat, another old RSS hand, B. S. Yeddyurappa has become Chief Minister in Karnataka. For that matter, Advani himself emerged from RSS shakhas, and was the prime architect of the Ram Janambhoomi movement, which reached its culmination with the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992, when he was present on the spot. Though Advani later described it as the saddest day in his life, the fact that he just kept wringing his hands, and did nothing concrete to stop the rioting mob from destroying the monument, cannot be wished away, or forgotten.
The Congress, busy with setting up committees and organising chintan shivirs (introspection camps), appears to be ill-prepared to face the challenge from the saffronite forces.
|
