Prime Minister Narendra Modi must be on top of the world after a successful G20 summit. Deservedly so. Equally ecstatic are the leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party. They should be a bit discreet, though. The PM has done his job for the country. They have not done theirs for the party and for Modi. He must be a tad disappointed. It’s not just about the recent results of byelections to seven assembly seats across six states, which were a bit of a letdown, except in Tripura. The outcome of the bypolls wasn’t a reflection of his governance. Bypolls, per se, were insignificant in terms of existing power equations on the ground. PM Modi wouldn’t be bothered save for the fact that the results were just the latest among a host of indicators of his party drifting in many states.
What must worry the PM is the news coming from across states — allegations of corruption and infighting and instances of moral turpitude within the BJP, showing the party in a poor light.
In June 2021, I wrote a piece titled UP, MP, Goa, Uttarakhand—BJP’s command-and-control malfunctioning. It was about sharpening divisions in the BJP in several states. Affairs in the BJP reminded me of The Second Coming by Irish poet WB Yeats: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre/The falcon cannot hear the falconer/Things fall apart/The Centre cannot hold/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”
Much has happened in Indian politics since then. For the BJP though, despite victories in crucial states such as Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat, not much has changed—there is still an over-reliance on PM Modi and the opposition has offered no alternative. Within the BJP, though, a lot has or is changing. Factionalism and infighting have grown more intense. Allegations of graft and moral turpitude are becoming a regular feature. Crab mentality is becoming more pronounced. We will come to the hows and whys of it later.
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Bypolls send a tough message to BJP
Let’s look at the assembly bypolls’ results. There was a big takeaway for the BJP in Tripura where it retained one seat and snatched another from the Left, winning the Muslim-majority Boxanagar seat for the first time ever. BJP’s rivals might offer many excuses: Largescale rigging, complacency bordering on indifference on the part of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and its candidate, and, rebellion by a former Congress minister and two-term Boxanagar MLA, Billal Mian, 12 days before the bypolls and his switch to the BJP and support for its candidate, Tafajjal Hossain, another ex-Congress leader. The fact, however, is that the BJP secured 88 per cent of votes in a constituency that has an estimated 66 per cent Muslim population. That’s a big deal for the BJP—something it hasn’t celebrated enough.
BJP national president JP Nadda was quick to congratulate Tripura CM Manik Saha and other party leaders. “This result shows the people’s approval of the developmental works carried out by our double-engine government under the guidance of Hon. PM Shri @narendramodi ji,” Nadda tweeted.
Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath might, however, have reasons to be upset about his party president’s message. If Tripura results showed “people’s approval of double-engine governance”, did UP’s Ghosi bypoll loss show things on the contrary? And even the reduced margin of victory in Uttarakhand’s Bageshwar for that matter?
It was a shocking loss in Ghosi, for sure. But can you blame Adityanath for it? BJP insiders say that he was opposed to Dara Singh Chauhan’s return to the party. Chauhan had resigned as a minister and quit the BJP ahead of assembly elections in 2022, accusing the Yogi government of being anti-Dalits and Other Backward Classes (OBCs). On a Samajwadi Party (SP) ticket thereafter, Chauhan won in Ghosi. But the leader was said to be keen to return to the BJP and the Yogi cabinet. It was Deputy CM Brajesh Pathak and state BJP chief Bhupendra Choudhary—both close to Union Home Minister Amit Shah—who got the better of CM Adityanath and let Chauhan back into the party. Chauhan’s BSP-SP-BSP-BJP-SP-BJP journey has been remarkable in terms of switching loyalties. Few were, therefore, surprised when he returned to the BJP only lose the bypoll. While CM Adityanath was against Chauhan’s return, he campaigned for him nonetheless — there was only that much he could do. It wasn’t the first time that the high command’s desire to rein in Yogi or foist politicians and bureaucrats on him backfired. If one starts citing instances, there will be thousands of words to say. That’s a story for another day.
The Ghosi bypoll results have thrown up some worrying questions about the BJP’s strategy. Thanks to central investigation agencies, former UP CM Mayawati has been reconciled to the BSP’s shrinking relevance in the state. In 2022, she fielded a Muslim in Ghosi who ended up with over 54,000 votes and 21 per cent voteshare. This year, the BSP asked its supporters to vote for NOTA in the bypoll — there were 1,725 NOTA votes in 2023 as against 1,249 in 2022. That means that the BSP could add only 476 votes. So, where did the party’s votes — primarily, Muslims’ and Dalits’ — go? Given that the BJP’s voteshare in Ghosi went up by 4 percentage points — from 33 per cent in 2022 to 37 per cent this year — as compared to a 15 per cent increase in the SP’s voteshare during this period, it seems that Mayawati’s voters switched to Akhilesh Yadav’s party lock, stock, and barrel. A slight increase in the BJP’s voteshare could be attributed to the fact that the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP), which was with the SP in 2022, has become the BJP’s partner now.
Ghosi has a considerable Rajbhar population, over which the SBSP has a sway. If the SP fielding a Rajput leader, Sudhakar Singh, made a dent into the BJP’s hold over its ‘upper’ caste votebank, the ruling party has more to worry about. In hindsight, Yogi was right in opposing Chauhan’s return to the BJP.
The BJP retained the Bageshwar seat in neighbouring Uttarakhand, but its victory margin came down from over 12,000 votes in 2022 to 2,405 votes in 2023. What should hurt the BJP more was its loss in Dhupguri, the eighth consecutive bypoll defeat for the party in West Bengal since the 2021 assembly election.
In Kerala’s Puthuppally assembly bypoll, the BJP sought to electorally test its Christian outreach initiatives. It ended up losing, securing only 6,558 votes — over 5,000 votes less than what it had secured in the 2021 assembly election. The BJP had made a major push in this election, making Congress leader AK Antony’s son, Anil, its national spokesperson and Union ministers Rajeev Chandrasekhar and V Muraleedharan campaign extensively. Despite allegations of graft and misgovernance against the Hemant Soren government, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha ended up increasing its voteshare by 14 percentage points, with the voteshare tally of the All Jharkhand Students’ Union, a BJP ally, coming down by 23 percentage points since the 2019 assembly election.
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PM Modi’s worries about BJP
These byelections by themselves wouldn’t worry PM Modi because the 2024 Lok Sabha election would be a different ball game altogether. People will be voting for him then. But the drifting party organisation and state leaders facing all kinds of questions won’t really help his cause. Take, for instance, his home state, Gujarat. PM Modi wins it singlehandedly for the party. And look at how his party colleagues are responding. A ‘pamphlet’ scandal has hit CM Bhupendra Patel’s office, resulting in a joint secretary, Parimal Shah, being shifted out.
He is the fifth official in the CMO to be shifted out for dubious reasons in recent months. The other four officials included Patel’s personal assistant, officer on special duty, and an additional public relations officer (PRO). Gujarat BJP general secretary Pradipsinh Vaghela, a close aide of state BJP president CR Patil, resigned early this month. He was one of the characters figuring in the so-called pamphlet scandal involving questionable land deals. He has denied any involvement, of course.
In Assam, the BJP is under the shadow of a suicide and a scam. The 44-year-old BJP Kisan Morcha general secretary, Indrani Tahbildar, was suspected to have died by suicide last month. It has been linked to an alleged cash-for-job scam.
Days before her death, intimate photos of Tahbildar had surfaced on social media, along with audio clips of her conversation with a BJP functionary. A BJP leader from Jorhat was suspected to have circulated those pictures. Five persons, all affiliated with the BJP, have been arrested in connection with her alleged suicide and cash-for-jobs scam.
To make it worse for CM Himanta Biswa Sarma, voices of dissent are emerging against him. An ex-MLA of the BJP, Ashok Sarma, recently went public, saying that the party was being “harmed by a newcomer” who came in 2015 and is chasing away old-timers — Himanta Sarma had joined the BJP in that year. Former Union minister Rajen Gohain resigned from his post of Assam Food and Civil Supplies Corporation chairperson in August 2023 and attacked CM Sarma over delimitation in his Nagaon constituency. He also accused a minister in the Sarma government of targeting him.
In Meghalaya, HM Shangpliang, an ex-MLA and ex-IAS officer, resigned from the BJP, accusing state unit chief Ernest Mawrie of promoting nepotism. The BJP’s lone minister in the Conrad Sangma government, Alexander Laloo Hek, has also accused Mawrie of making unilateral decisions.
Ex-BJP MP from Maharashtra, Kirit Somaiya, came under opposition fire in July 2023 after a controversial video clip purportedly featuring him surfaced. The matter is under probe now.
And Maharashtrians are still curious about the attempted blackmailing of deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis’s wife, Amruta, by her fashion designer friend, a bookie’s daughter, Aniksha Jaisinghani is out on bail now.
There are too many skeletons coming out of the BJP’s cupboards in one state after another. That’s when one is not even talking about the BJP high command’s hot and cold war with mass leaders in states like Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Karnataka. Many BJP leaders are also displaying unusual arrogance — the latest being Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar publicly mocking a woman who urged him to open a factory in her area so that people could get jobs. “Next time when Chandrayaan-4 goes to the moon, [I] will send you there,” the CM told her at his Jan Samvad (public interaction) programme last week.
PM Modi’s popularity rating has always been high. It may go even higher now that the G20 summit has been such a success. But when he is on top of the world and deserves to celebrate, affairs in the BJP are a big spoiler. It’s not the Congress or INDIA that may bother him. It’s the siege within.
DK Singh is Political Editor at ThePrint. Views are personal.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)