Comment on recent developments in the BJP since February 2014
Only three important names namely Pappu Yadav, Mohammad Shahabuddin and Laloo Prasad Yadav were missing from the BJP’s list of candidates from Bihar for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections when it was released in March 2014. Everyone else from the 1991 V P Singh’s or Lok Dal’s team had been accommodated by the BJP. And these three were out probably because they could not fight the election as the result of their convictions by the courts of law for various crimes. The list contained such figures which had abused the BJP and Narendra Modi as communal till a few days back.
There were 40 Lok Sabha seats from Bihar where the BJP could fight the election and of course seeing the wave in favour of Narendra Modi, could have won at more than thirty five seats. However the leadership (read Rajnath Singh) decided to dole out 10 seats to those who had been well known for their past antipathy for Narendra Modi, and who posed secularism. Paswan, another VP Singh aide, got seven seats from BJP. Four of these were SC-reserved seats, where Paswan decided to erect himself, his two brothers and his son–Four from a family, a record in the history of family-politics in India.
Paswan’s all candidates had been defeated in the previous Lok Sabha election and he is no more a force in the caste politics or even crime-politics of Bihar. In fact, the four SC reserved seats could have been granted to four different SC castes, and four different Scheduled Castes could have been obliged by the party. Giving all the four to a single family was just a failed opportunity to broaden the caste base among the scheduled castes of Bihar. It is strange why Mayawati was not contacted and just left out! Mayawati has a better character and better public-base than Paswan. Even the thirty seats kept by BJP, only nine were given to the persons who actually belonged to the BJP, all other were given to the outsiders, who had only recently joined the BJP chasing power.
In Maharashtra, soon after that we see Gadkari, under advice by Rajnath, unnecessarily meeting the MNS chief and forging alliance with him. MNS is hated by Biharis because of the tyranny committed by the MNS cadres on to the poor workers of Bihar working in Maharashtra. Raj Thakre does not maintain any pretentions about his intense hate for this ‘dirty class of people’ also known as Bhaiya. Hence what was the need to contact him? The MNS supports Narendra Modi. However this would only have resulted in going to MNS some of the pro-Modi NDA votes. Also Biharis did not like this move. In fact this was not needed for getting more votes. As a back-lash, many of the Biharis in Maharashtra might have voted for the Congress/NCP we can guess. Even a couple of percent of votes makes the difference.
The million pound question or the mystery is why did Rajnath Singh give BJP tickets to so many anti-BJP, anti-Hindutva people? Well it is no mystery by now. Answer is clear. He wanted to play Chandrashekhar, in case the party failed to win the adequate numbers. Rajnath can stake the claim to Prime-Minister-ship with the help of these people who are not loyal to RSS or any other BJP leader but Rajnath Singh.
The game was two-fold. Give tickets to such candidates that no more than 160 candidates win. Even if the figure 160 is crossed the BJP proper winning candidates should not be more than 150. And if they win more in numbers, then Rajnath Singh should have a secularist majority. In event of post-election dispute between Rajnath and Narendra Modi, the Rajput MPs would back Rajnath. Hence Rajputs were given tickets liberally. Brahmins and Bhumihars are generally NaMo loyalist. They were wiped out from the party-ticket list wherever possible. If they could not be ignored, they were given inconvenient constituencies. However even the Rajputs which were loyal to RSS ideology or NaMo were not given tickets examples being Radha-Nandan Singh and Jaswant Singh.
And if needed Rajnath planned to play the VP Singh game: favouring the reservation for the OBCs in the Private Sector. At this point the new entrants from RJD and JDU like Ran Kripal Yadav and other new allies like Upendra Kushwaha and Ran Bilas Paswan will take his side and the older guards will just have to watch as silent spectators. Raja Ram and Ram Bilas would to support such move.
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