The Sunday Guardian

BJP’S VIBHISHANA STRATEGY BRINGS POLITICAL DIVIDENDS

- CONTINUED FROM P1

Both Modi and Shah are 24X7 politician­s, who have reached this pinnacle on account of a thoroughly thought through strategy and focused approach. This is in sharp contrast to how the Congress, its main ideologica­l adversary, has been preparing for the electoral arena battles. In Congress, there is no concentrat­ed contemplat­ion and an unimplemen­table plan to utilise its grassroots support, which is now dwindling away. Both Modi and Shah apparently realise that once the Congress workers and leaders desert their party for greener pastures in the saffron brigade, their party would totter down the road, ultimately fizzling out.

The latest case in point is how the BJP has managed to virtually hijack the organisati­onal backbone of the Congress on the eve of the Delhi municipal corporatio­n elections. The former Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) chief for Delhi, Arvinder Singh Lovely, the Youth Congress boss, Amit Malik, the Mahila Congress head, Barkha Shukla Singh have already joined the party and several NSUI and Sewa Dal volunteers would be doing so in the immediate future. If the Congress loses the polls, it could make the national capital virtually Congressmu­kt. The BJP had won all the seven seats in the 2014 Parliament­ary elections, while the Aam Aadmi Party won 67 out of 70 Assembly seats in 2015, denying Congress an entry into the new House. The MCD-poll debacle, if it happens, would seriously impact the fortunes of the Congress and nobody would be more elated than the BJP leadership.

Modi and Shah are working to a plan, which also entails that they do not have to rely solely on the BJP cadres who are overawed by the Prime Minister, yet some of them hold personal allegiance to Atal Behari Vajpay- ee and Lal Krishna Advani, the two doyens of the past. Therefore, by bringing in new inductees in the party, who are, in totality, indebted to the current leadership for a fresh lease of political life, the duo is expanding the reach of the BJP. In the past, politics used to be based on the dictum of the Congress versus the rest. However, in the present day, it is BJP versus the rest. Modi has succeeded in ensuring that the BJP sets the agenda and all others react to it, thus providing him with the handle to set the tone for the political narrative. For him and Shah, the ends are as important as the means, and sometimes even more significan­t, depending on how the scenario is unfolding.

It is but natural that the topmost priority of the BJP is to get the Congress out of its way in a quantifiab­le, measureabl­e manner. Other rival parties are being earmarked as well, but in their case, it is to force them into submission as what may happen in Tamil Nadu, where both the factions of the AIADMK may initially unite, subsequent­ly moving closer to the BJP, and in the process permanentl­y distance themselves from the Congress. The BJP is attempting to use the NCP in Gujarat to create an option for the influentia­l and dominant Patel community to cross over, in case they decide to abandon the saffron brigade, whom they have supported for several decades. The idea is that the Patel votes should not go towards the Congress, as this would be detrimenta­l to the BJP, but to an entity where the BJP remains on course of victory. Prior to the Uttar Pradesh elections, the BJP had wooed Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and there was intense speculatio­n that he would re-align with his former ally since he was unable to cope with the activities of his present coalition partner, the RJD.

Getting back to Gujarat, the BJP is engaged in an attempt to bring back Shankar Sinh Vagehla into the party fold in order to derive advantage of the powerful Kshatriya community, which has been the vote base of the Congress. In Maharashtr­a, it has continued to give importance to Sharad Pawar, so as to keep the Shiv Sena on tenterhook­s. In Andhra Pradesh, the BJP has a strong partner in Chandrabab­u Naidu, but is not averse to taking help from his archrival Jaganmohan Reddy if the situation so demands.

The exercise to usher back Vaghela is also a part of the Vibhishana strategy, which has worked wonders in the past in Haryana, Maharashtr­a, Manipur, Assam and more recently in Uttrakhand and Uttar Pradesh. In UP, there is no denying that the Prime Minister’s aggressive campaignin­g played a stellar role in the party’s impressive win, but it is the shifting of the Congress vote towards the BJP in more than 320 Assembly segments, where the Congress had not put up nominees, which was a huge contributo­ry factor.

However, it is not that everything is going perfect for the BJP, strategy wise. The party leadership has been persuasive­ly and fluently vocalising its intent to fight corruption, but at one level it is seen to be encouragin­g tainted elements to come under its wraps. A political interpreta­tion of the Congress victory in the two byelection­s in Karnataka is that the induction of tainted former Chief Minister S.M. Krishna into the BJP proved counterpro­ductive as it defied the anti-corruption campaign.

Former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao’s trusted political aide, the late Devendra Dwivedi used to state that politics has its own logic, but its own illogic as well. Winning is important, but if the BJP has to remain a long term player at the national level, it would be expected to show results in terms of economic growth, job generation and good governance. If not so, the grand design would come to a nought.

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