Sinha’s departure exposes BJP

More than the question what effect, if any, the decision of senior BJP figure Yashwant Sinha to leave the ruling party will have, the striking aspect of Mr Sinha’s departure is that it paints today’s BJP in unappealing colours. The party, which Mr Sinha left on Saturday after the association of a quarter century, is not the party he had joined.

The image of that party was shaped by the soft cultural aura associated with Atal Behari Vajpayee, although Lal Krishna Advani, the other towering leader of the party, was the organisational boss and the articulator of the destructive ideological line on Ayodhya, which made the BJP a mass party in the north. Since the arrival of Narendra Modi on the national scene, that BJP is a distant memory. In Mr Modi’s BJP, the party’s most prominent and most senior faces have been consigned to oblivion.

Former defence minister and external affairs minister Jaswant Singh was not even given the BJP ticket to contest the 2014 Lok Sabha poll. That was RSS’ doing, of course. But Mr Modi has maintained the distance even with a very ill Mr Singh. Mr Advani and Mr Murli Manohar Joshi are MPs, but they dare not speak, leave alone speak up. Mr Sinha spoke up — roundly attacking the Modi dispensation as a “threat to democracy” and a failure on all fronts — and finally resigned in frustration. Arun Shourie was cast aside and is an articulate critic.

There is more than generational change in evidence here. Mediocre yesmen abound in the BJP and the government at top levels. Self-praise has replaced consultation and deliberation. The society and the economy have suffered. No one in ruling circles is looked up to with respect.