The BJP is confusion confounded, as it has started taking a beating from all sides. With the Supreme Court cold-shouldering its plea for removal of roadblocks to take out a Rath Yatra by its president Amit Shah in West Bengal, the season of hopelessness for the saffron party has taken a new turn. The disaster it faced in the five-state assembly polls, it would now seem, was just the start.
The Calcutta incident is funny. The West Bengal government refused permission for the proposed yatra, fearing communal tension. The BJP went on appeal to the Calcutta High Court against the government order. A single-judge bench of Justice Tapobrata Chakraborty gave a ruling favouring the petitioners, allowing the yatra to be conducted under certain conditions. Following this, the state government went on appeal against the order. The Division Bench of the same High Court quashed the single-judge bench’s order and asked it to consider afresh the matter, keeping in view the 36 intelligence inputs submitted by the state. This division bench ruling must not have been incorporated into the BJP’s plan. Therefore, bewilderment might have set in when, on an appeal to the Supreme Court, the BJP was asked to wait till the vacations end and court work restarts on 2nd January 2019. Now, that is a long wait for someone looking East.
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When the going is not good, nothing turns right. Senior Union minister Nitin Gadkari’s observation that those who took credit for successes should also take the blame for defeat was a direct reference to the Assembly poll losses the party suffered. The immediate temptation on the part of the party’s central leadership was to shift the blame for the defeat on to the chief ministers of the three states where the party lost power – Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Rumours were also spread that the Modi-Shah duo did not want to give a long rope to the MP and Rajasthan CMs, who often defied the central leadership’s diktats.
The resignation of a Union minister, based out of Bihar, amid the bad political turn for the BJP and the NDA, is another case in point. The likes of former ministers of the Vajpayee era, Shatrughan Sinha, Yashwant Sinha, Arun Shourie, are already targeting the Modi-Shah combine with hard-hitting statements and court cases. Shatrughan Sinha, the actor-turned Bihar politician’s presence at a DMK event in Chennai alongside Opposition stalwarts is not lost sight of. Subramanian Swamy’s diatribes against the newly appointed RBI governor are also an open challenge to the Modi-Jaitley team at the helm. Apart from this, the public announcement by senior leader and Union cabinet minister Sushma Swaraj that she is opting out of the electoral race of 2019 must also seem like a forewarning. What messages these send out to the prospective voters for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls is anybody’s guess.
Efforts have intensified, meanwhile, on the Opposition front to take on the BJP collectively and discussions are under way to settle the leadership issue centering on Congress president Rahul Gandhi. Even if a consensus on this is not possible, chances of a broad understanding on other matters to put up a united fight at the hustings are being explored. The entry of Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao to canvas support for a grand alliance, in a fresh round of push after he won the state elections, is watched with hope as well as suspicion. Some Congress leaders suspect he is playing the BJP game to divide the Opposition votes by opening a new channel — aside from the push the Congress and parties such as the TDP and the Left are making to craft a similar alliance for the upcoming polls.
All of these go to show that the magic of 2014 is now a thing of the past. The Opposition, largely out in the cold until recently due to a flurry of election defeats, is now more confident of a victory at the next LS hustings. How things shape up is not clear yet. Parties are already in the candidate selection stage in various states, preparatory to the polls and start of the campaign in full force after the turn of the new year. With the season of misfortune in, who would stay with the NDA and who would seek greener pastures is a big question. After all the tantrums by the Shiv Sena as an NDA partner, it could now be the time for it to jump the ship, just as TDP did. Altogether, winning the next polls could be an uphill task for the saffron party.
