What is it with Nitish Kumar that the Bharatiya Janata Party is not abandoning him? Many political strategists have been racking their brains to figure out an answer. After all, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is at the height of his popularity.
Some say the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) setbacks in the assembly elections in Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Haryana have made Amit Shah risk-averse. He wouldn’t want Kumar to again forge a 2015-type mahagathbandhan or grand alliance comprising the Janata Dal-United (JDU), Congress, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and other parties. And that’s why he has put all speculation to rest by declaring Nitish Kumar the chief ministerial candidate of the BJP-JD(U) alliance in 2020, too.
BJP insiders have a different take on this. Shah’s priority is to finish the RJD first, they say. As per their calculation, a defeat in this election would render Lalu Yadav’s party irrelevant for good. Senior RJD leaders have already started deserting the party and another poll loss would drive the RJD’s mainstay, the Yadavs, into the BJP fold.
Nitish Kumar, 69, is playing his last political innings and once he hangs up his boots, the JD(U) does not have a second line of leadership to stay afloat for long. With the RJD and the JD(U) reduced to political margins, the BJP would become unassailable in Bihar. The long and the short of the story is that the BJP wants to use Nitish Kumar to ‘finish’ the RJD first and then wait for—and work on—Nitish Kumar’s exit from the scene to stake claim to—or usurp—his political legacy.
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BJP turns the heat on regional players
The BJP is following a similar waiting game in Odisha, too. It emerged as the principal opposition party in the 2019 assembly election, relegating the Congress to the third position. One would expect Narendra Modi and Amit Shah to build on these gains and arm-wrestle with Naveen Patnaik. Instead, the BJP befriended him to ensure Biju Janata Dal’s support to its government in Parliament. Their camaraderie is such that the BJP wouldn’t reward former BJD leader Baijayant Panda even with a Rajya Sabha berth for shifting his loyalty to the BJP ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha election. Again, BJP insiders say, Modi and Shah would rather wait for Patnaik, who would be 74 in October, to hang up his boots. Once Patnaik, who has also not developed a second line of leadership in the party, is out of the arena, the BJD is there for the BJP to break and take. With the Congress virtually irrelevant in Odisha today, the BJP can look forward to dominating the state politics the way the BJD has for two decades.
Modi and Shah are, however, going for the jugular in other states dominated by regional players. The Modi government needed them in its first innings because the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was far short of a majority and it needed the help of other parties for parliamentary approval of contentious bills. As it is, the NDA is comfortably placed in the 245-member Rajya Sabha with the BJP alone having 85 seats as against the Congress’ 40. Even if one counts the MPs of the strident anti-BJP parties (as of today) such as the Left, the Trinamool Congress, the Nationalist Congress Party, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) and a few others, the Congress and its allies can’t match up to the BJP’s own tally. The NDA’s MPs and the nominated members put together are barely a dozen short of the majority mark in the Rajya Sabha today, while there is a long queue of floating voters ready to support the Modi government on the Floor of the House.
The Modi government, therefore, doesn’t need to indulge regional parties any longer. Besides, while the BJP was in pursuit of ‘Congress-mukt Bharat’ and was consolidating its gains at the Centre and in states where its main rival was the Congress, it was the regional parties that served as a bulwark against the grand old party. These regional parties have successfully decimated the Congress in many states, creating a vacuum for the BJP to fill in and expand.
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In West Bengal, the BJP is going for the kill as Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress remains the only challenger, with the Left and the Congress vacating the opposition space for the saffron party to occupy. Banerjee, 65, still has a lot of politics left in her and the BJP couldn’t afford to bide its time.
Like Naveen Patnaik, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana chief ministers—Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy and K. Chandrasekhar Rao—have been acting like BJP allies for all practical purposes. Needing their support in Parliament until recently, the saffron party let these two regional satraps fight it out with the Congress and the Telugu Desam Party. A key BJP strategist, however, told me that these two states are the “natural next stop” for the party in its southern journey.
The BJP has found “a fertile ground” for it in Telangana, which has 13 per cent Muslim population and prominent Muslim leader Asaduddin Owaisi of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) as an ally of the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS). The saffron party won four of the 17 Lok Sabha seats in the state—as against TRS’ 9 and Congress’ 3—in 2019. The Congress may not be politically irrelevant in Telangana yet—as it has become in Bihar, Odisha or West Bengal—but the BJP has reasons to go for the kill.
In Andhra Pradesh, the Congress, as also the BJP, drew a blank in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. With the TDP, led by 70-year-old Chandrababu Naidu, showing no signs of revival and CM Reddy being accused of “minority appeasement”, it’s an ideal situation for the BJP to swing into action. The party sent two of its young MPs—Prathap Simha of Mysore and Tejasvi Surya of Bengaluru South—to meet actor-turned-politician Pawan Kalyan of the Jana Sena Party early this year. The BJP would like Kalyan to merge his party with it and become its face in Andhra. These are early days, but the BJP has started turning the heat on Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, too. The CBI is already on Reddy’s tail in the disproportionate assets case.
In Tamil Nadu, Jayalalithaa’s demise has made the ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), a BJP ally, vulnerable. The BJP has reasons to hope for a foothold in the state where the Congress ceded its space in the late 1960s to Dravidian parties and is struggling to retain its relevance through alliances with them since then.
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Congress’ blinkered vision
Even as the BJP goes after the regional parties now, the Congress continues to solely focus on the BJP. The grand old party lost its pre-eminent position in Indian politics because of the rise of regional parties, but it remains obsessed with the BJP, expending its entire energy in countering Prime Minister Narendra Modi. As ThePrint Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta pointed out, the BJP has 92 per cent success record against the Congress on seats won in 2019. And the victory margins on most of these seats are in the lakhs. The Congress is still obsessed with the BJP, instead of trying to better its score against regional players who offer a better chance.
As the BJP finally marches into regional players’ bastions, the Congress’ space for political manoeuvring is shrinking by the day. Modi and Shah have launched Phase II of the BJP’s expansionist political agenda, but the Congress can’t see it, thanks to Rahul Gandhi’s obsession with Modi.
Views are personal.