There are two ways of looking at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s response to the 2024 Lok Sabha election outcome. The first is that he is truly convinced that the people have shown faith in him and his government by giving a mandate to the National Democratic Alliance for a third term. He is looking to rule for the next five years with the same authority as he did for the past 10 years. The PM has given many indications to this effect: Largely the same Cabinet, with some token representation of allies; the same old ex-bureaucrats in his core team; the same self-proclaimed non-partisan presiding officer of the Lok Sabha; and, the same aggression against the Opposition.
Another way of looking at his response is to treat it as bravado—an attempt to hide the vulnerabilities of a coalition government. Any show of weakness at this point would embolden the Opposition, the allies, the ambitious BJP colleagues, the ideological patron and even the otherwise obedient bureaucracy. Things will start falling apart. That should explain the unnecessary belligerence against the Opposition in the very first session of the new Lok Sabha.
A small, though significant, indicator of how the government is actually reading the 2024 mandate came from the finance ministry discontinuing the practice of officially releasing monthly data with state-wise break up of Goods and Services Tax (GST) collections. That’s because of the assessment. As my colleague TCA Sharad Raghavan reported, it was creating resentment among the people who were thinking that the government was sucking them dry by collecting too much tax.
That’s as hilarious as it can get but it gives us an inkling of how the ‘system’ is responding to the poll results.
BJP must explain losses
Be that as it may, Modi would have us believe the first scenario—that he is convinced that the 2024 election results were not a reflection on his governance and so he has retained the same old team. The Bharatiya Janata Party, therefore, needs to explain the loss of 63 seats—from 303 in 2019 to 240 in 2024. The PM hasn’t said it in as many words, though.
Signals from the ruling party are on the contrary—that it sees the 2024 mandate as a vindication of its politics and organisational prowess. If at all, blame the individuals for the party’s performances in some states – say, Yogi Adityanath in Uttar Pradesh and Devendra Fadnavis in Maharashtra. Or, for that matter, blame the Opposition’s ‘propaganda’ for a section of the backward classes and Dalits abandoning the BJP.
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Nadda’s reappointments
This message from the BJP came out loud and clear on Friday when party president JP Nadda appointed in-charges and co-in-charges in 23 states and co-ordinator and joint co-ordinator for Northeastern states. Most of them were reassigned to the same job. Whether their performance was so outstanding that they deserved to be re-appointed is beside the point.
The issue is that Nadda made those appointments five days after his term as party president was supposedly over. His three-year-term had ended in January 2023. It was extended till June 2024. Such a long extension was ostensibly in view of the general election, but one has to be extremely credulous to buy that. He could have been simply re-elected for a full-fledged second term. Given that the BJP president’s term is three years, Nadda was virtually halfway through his second tenure. Even that got over on 30 June, technically.
You may recall that BJP leader Subramanian Swamy had threatened to take legal action against the party for lack of “internal elections” and extension of Nadaa’s term as contravention to the party constitution. Swamy had written to the Election Commission about it and informed Nadda about it in a letter dated 6 February 2024. Within two weeks, the BJP national convention amended the party constitution, authorising the parliamentary board to make decisions about the president – including the term and extension – in emergencies.
Incidentally, the party never officially announced the decision. Going by this reported amendment, the parliamentary board had the power to give another extension to Nadda beyond 30 June. Only that nobody seems to know anything about any such meeting or decision on this issue.
The BJP hasn’t announced any such decision or conveyed anything about it to its office-bearers, not to speak of its 18 crore members. We can assume that Modi and Amit Shah must have verbally asked Nadda to continue functioning as the party president. BJP’s constitution aside, that’s perfectly okay. In 2019, Shah joined the Union Cabinet and Nadda was appointed the party’s working president. Some reporters inquired with a top party leader if the BJP’s constitution had a provision for the extension of the president’s tenure and appointment of a working president. “Party hai toh samvidhan hai. Samvidhan party se bada nahin hota (Party is there and so the constitution is there. Constitution is not bigger than the party),” he said. So, let’s be realistic and not quibble over what the BJP’s constitution says.
But why should Nadda go ahead and make important appointments or re-appointments? If the BJP plans to start the process of choosing the next president, should Nadda not have waited for his successor to take these decisions—at least, technically? Not really. Nadda wouldn’t appoint or re-appoint anyone without Modi-Shah’s approval. So, for all practical purposes, it doesn’t matter if he appoints office-bearers today or his successor does it tomorrow. Whether Nadda was technically authorised to do it after 30 June is mere hair-splitting in the context of today’s BJP.
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Why can’t Modi-Shah decide?
The big question is why Modi and Shah are dithering over Nadda’s successor. There is no dearth of loyalists who can step into his shoes. There is, of course, the election process. But if they identify his successor, he or she can be made the working president- the way Nadda was made in June 2019- pending the election formality. The party’s spin masters argue that the delay in starting the election process is because of the fact that assembly elections are slated in three states and one Union territory- Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir – in September-October.
The same argument can be used to defer it further as Delhi will go to polls in February 2025. In 2019, the BJP launched its membership drive in July and completed it in August. Obviously, the coming Assembly elections are not the reason for delaying the election process or choosing a working president as an understudy to Nadda.
It seems that Modi-Shah just can’t make up their mind. Or is it because the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has a different view? The BJP’s ideological patron has always had a say in choosing the party president. The Sangh must be more circumspect after Nadda’s declaration of independence; he had said that the BJP didn’t need the RSS anymore. Neither Modi nor Shah said or did anything that suggested their disagreement with Nadda over this. There are, therefore, high stakes for Nadda’s successor. Whether it’s a man or woman, a Dalit or an OBC, a Maharashtrian or UP-ite is a matter of ex post facto justification and analysis. The main criterion for the next BJP president will be where his or her true loyalty lies.
Anyway, whenever the BJP starts its membership drive, it will be confronted with many challenges. Its membership figures have always been very puzzling.
In March 2015, the party said that 8.8 crore people became its members during the membership drive. Amit Shah revised it to 11 crore a few months later. In 2017, Shah mentioned eight and nine crore on different occasions at the party’s national executive meeting. He maintained it at 11 crore after that.
After the membership drive in 2019, the party declared that it had added seven crore more members, which took the total tally to 18 crore. That was obviously based on the conviction that each of the 11 crore members who had joined in 2014 was still with the party and very much in this world after a five-year gap. Given that the BJP never releases the state-wise or constituency-wise break-ups, one can’t even tally it with the votes it receives in elections. One must take it at face value.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the BJP got 23.6 crore votes. Given the last two record-breaking membership drives, the thing to look forward to is if the next drive will see the tally cross the 23.6 crore mark.
DK Singh is Political Editor at ThePrint. He tweets @dksingh73. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)