Why the BJP Party Seniors Will be Missed Post Elections

Sunil Garodia, the indianrepublic, 2 April 2014:  The last few days have seen internal as well as external turmoil in the BJP. Senior leaders have sulked, with Jaswant Singh leaving the party and Sushma Swaraj speaking in his favour. Earlier, Advani was brought around after many deliberations. At that time, ally Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackarey had spoken in favour of Advani. Then, mindless quest for allies landed the party in a soup as the case of Pramod Muthalik and Sabir Ali showed.

Why is all this happening to a party that was supposed to be a close knit one with a tight command under Narendra Modi, single mindedly working towards Abki baar, Modi sarkaar?

To understand this, we have to know that an Indian political party, as other parties elsewhere in the world, work through a system of patronage, back-scratching and coteries. Narendra Modi, despite whatever support he has drummed up, will remain a regional satrap, an upstart or an outsider in the eyes of entrenched power-brokers (yes, even the BJP has them). Only if, and it is a big if, he successfully leads the party in forming the government after the elections will he be accepted by these power brokers as a power centre bigger than them.

Although he has aligned the Rajnath Singh-Arun Jaitley-RSS axis in his favour, the L.K.Advani-Sushma Swaraj-Murli Manohar Joshi-Jaswant Singh coterie is firmly against him. It seems that the Shiv Sena is also favouring the latter. Is this queering the pitch for Modi?

The latest ABP-Nielsen opinion polls show that although the BJP-led NDA is still leading, it has lost almost 6 seats from the projections in February, although it has gained 1 percent in vote share. Narendra Modi is far ahead in public perception as the front runner for prime minister (see chart). 

Of course, in India, not everything is tied up before the polls as there are many fence sitters in the smaller parties. They bargain hard before joining any major grouping. Hence the situation remains fluid. Also, it is expected that these smaller parties will tend to gravitate towards the grouping that will in the position to form the government. In that respect the NDA can take solace from the poll results.

On the other hand, Narendra Modi, with 54 percent votes is miles ahead of his closest rival, Rahul Gandhi, who is second with just 18 percent votes. The also ran’s in this category are Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh with 5 percent, Mayawati with 4% and Mulayam and Kejriwal with 3 percent each (see chart).

As the opinion poll results show NDA still short of majority, there is going to be a scramble for post poll alliances. It is here where Narendra Modi will have to use all his political acumen to cobble together a workable alliance without bowing to the excessive demands of the regional parties. The party seniors, with years of networking behind them, would have been of help, but most of them are estranged. An unstable coalition will not let Modi realize his growth agenda .