In July 2023, when Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde sent a message to Prime Minister Narendra Modi that his father, Sambhaji Shinde, wanted to meet him, the PM readily obliged. Four generations of the Shinde family arrived to meet the PM — Sambhaji, Eknath, his son and parliamentarian Shrikant and his wife, and the Maharashtra CM’s grandson Rudransh.
An overwhelmed Sambhaji thanked Modi for making his son chief minister. “Nahin, nahin, yeh toh unki (Eknath’s) tapasya ka phal hai. Maine kuch nahin kiya (No, no…It’s the result of Eknath’s dedication and commitment. I have done nothing),” the PM told him.
Happy to receive chocolates from the Prime Minister, Shrikant’s son started indulging himself in the lawns. Now, it was time for serious discussions. Modi sought an update on the tragic landslide in the Raigad district, where 22 people were reported to have died till then and rescue operations had been underway to save about 50 families trapped under the rubble. The landslide had occurred around 10.30 pm on 19 July, and by midnight, Shinde had dispatched three of his ministers to the site. The CM had himself left during the wee hours for Raigad, trekking for over three hours in the hilly terrain to reach the site of the landslide.
PM Modi appreciated the CM’s prompt reaction and moved on to discuss the progress of infrastructure projects, especially the Dharavi redevelopment project being carried out by the Adani Group.
Shinde came out of the PM’s residence extremely happy.
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Big brother in Delhi
On 18 July, at a mega meeting of 38 partners of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), Shinde was asked to propose the resolution. His misgivings, if any, about the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) gameplan behind making Ajit Pawar his deputy were over.
Another NDA partner who returned from the meeting satisfied and happy was EK Palaniswami, general secretary of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and former Tamil Nadu CM. Seated next to the PM at the meeting, Palaniswami was asked to second the resolution. Modi paid special attention to him, according to AIADMK leaders.
BJP’s partners in the NDA had reasons to think that they had finally arrived. The big brother, who never bothered about them for nine years — except for routine meetings ahead of Parliament sessions — was indulging them.
A few days after the NDA meeting, reporters asked Union Home Minister Amit Shah outside Parliament: “When is the next NDA meeting?” Wearing his typical half-genial, half-dismissive smile, Shah quipped, “In 2028”. The BJP chief strategist won’t admit it publicly, but he obviously didn’t have any delusion about his allies’ strength.
Of the 37 allies that gathered in Delhi’s Ashok Hotel on 18 July, nine didn’t even contest the 2019 Lok Sabha election and 16 drew a blank. Of the remaining dozen allies, seven won one each. Of these, only Shinde’s party, the Shiv Sena minus Uddhav Thackeray camp, with 13 MPs, seemed to have some political heft. Two factions of the Lok Janshakti Party, led by Chirag Paswan and his uncle Pashupati Paras, have six MPs; Anupriya Patel’s Apna Dal has two.
These 37 parties brought no big heft to the BJP for the 2024 Lok Sabha election. The Delhi meeting was a spectacle, not a show of strength. If the Congress could bring 26 opposition parties on one platform in Bengaluru as a show of strength, the BJP could line up 38 — if only for the heck of it. Except for the AIADMK, Shiv Sena, and the LJP (RV) — and the Ajit Pawar faction of the Nationalist Congress Party, if at all—others were more about creating an optical illusion of a grand alliance.
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Uttar Pradesh to Bihar
Look at Uttar Pradesh. In that state, the BJP has three self-proclaimed repositories of Kurmi, Rajbhar, and Nishad votebanks. The party knows well that these parties gain more from being Modi’s allies. None of them has the ability to win even a single seat on their own — so the BJP would rather keep them in the NDA, whatever their electoral worth. Why gift even a few thousand votes to the opposition?
In Bihar, Chirag Paswan’s party managed to get around 6 per cent votes in the 2020 assembly election. Chirag flaunts it as evidence of his status as the true inheritor of his father Ram Vilas Paswan’s political legacy.
BJP leaders in Bihar have their own interpretations, though. They believe that Chirag managed to get the support of BJP voters because he projected himself as PM Modi’s ‘Hanuman’ and contested only against Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) candidates. BJP voters who felt disillusioned with Kumar voted for Paswan’s party in those constituencies. That explained his party’s 6 per cent votes. Chirag has been drawing good crowds, and he will surely resent such interpretations.
When Amit Shah said that the next NDA meeting will be in 2028, it might seem like the big brother is talking the little ones down. So be it. The BJP is showing off allies it may not be bothered about in terms of their electoral significance on the larger political canvas of 2024. The ruling party can’t decide about the alliance partners who can actually make a difference. Its leadership is caught in a dilemma—whether to expand in the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha election or consolidate the alliance. Its expansion plan in South India is going nowhere at this stage. It’s not pushing the BJP’s Odisha agenda. And it’s facing big headwinds in West Bengal. Basically, regional parties have turned out to be stronger and electorally wilier than what Modi and Shah expected.
The BJP leadership is suddenly looking confused about its next course of action — from Chandigarh to Chennai and from Mumbai to Puri.
Expand or consolidate?
Let’s start with Punjab, given how assiduously PM Modi has been trying to woo the Sikhs. The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) is reportedly desperate to join the NDA despite the reservations of its ally, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Akali Dal leaders maintain in private that the BJP top leadership is somehow lukewarm to the SAD’s overtures — even though both know that if they don’t come together, they should forget about the 13 Lok Sabha seats in Punjab.
And why is the BJP leadership cussed?
They think that it’s an opportunity for their party to get out of the Akali Dal’s shadow. There is also hope that the Congress-Aam Aadmi Party alliance under the INDIA banner won’t last till the Lok Sabha election. In a four-cornered contest, the BJP would be able to retain its two seats at least, if not gain more. The last word on the possible SAD-BJP rapprochement can’t be spoken yet, though.
In Haryana, the BJP might have run the government for four years with support from Dushyant Chautala’s Jannayak Janata Party (JJP), but BJP leaders mince no words about their intention to “win all 10 seats” in the state on their own. Chautala can’t walk out of the alliance because he stands to lose whatever he has. What he may do closer to the Lok Sabha election, when the Haryana assembly polls will also be much closer, is difficult to predict.
In Odisha, the BJP replaced the Congress as the principal opposition party and managed to give a scare to CM Naveen Patnaik by winning 8 of the 21 Lok Sabha seats in 2019. The BJP hasn’t shown any eagerness to build on its gains after that. Patnaik has been as good an ally as any NDA partner could be. The top BJP leadership looks reluctant to upset him. He can be relied on for support if and when required after the 2024 Lok Sabha election. The BJP seems to be biding its time for a post-Patnaik era in Odisha politics. But the CM isn’t inclined to hang up his boots any time soon.
Mission South flounders
After the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the BJP’s Mission South became a big buzzword in political circles. The party had won four Lok Sabha seats in Telangana. The next three years were all about BJP’s expansion — from an impressive show in Hyderabad municipal polls to assembly bypolls and defectors coming from everywhere. Etala Rajender, who exited the Bharat Rashtra Samiti (formerly Telangana Rashtra Samiti) was a prized catch.
And suddenly, the BJP dropped the ball.
The loss in the Munugode assembly bypolls and a crushing defeat in the 2023 Karnataka assembly election appeared to have a massive impact on the BJP’s plans. The party seems to have lost the appetite for a fight in South India. It replaced Bandi Sanjay Kumar, the face of the party’s aggression in Telangana, in July. The Congress, whom the BJP had replaced as the TRS’ primary challenger, has gotten alive and kicking. So much so that there is sudden speculation in political circles about the possibility of the BJP and the TRS having an understanding in 2024. It sounds like an outrageous idea, given the hostility between them over the past three years. But the BJP is certainly not the same as it was until recently. Anyway, there will be more clarity about the party’s move after the Telangana assembly election results.
In Andhra Pradesh, the BJP had started turning the heat on the Jagan Mohan Reddy-led government, even targeting the ‘Christian chief minister’. The stage looked set for a reunion with estranged ally Telugu Desam Party (TDP). BJP’s current ally, Pawan Kalyan, is more than eager and so is the TDP. But the BJP seems to have developed cold feet. It’s diffident about upsetting Jagan Mohan Reddy, who wouldn’t have any electoral tie-up with the BJP, anyway. What explains this diffidence? Contingency plans for 2024? One doesn’t know.
Kerala has been a no-go area for the BJP all these years. That it has gone slow after showing bursts of energy is understandable. In Tamil Nadu, state BJP chief K Annamalai threatened to resign if his party continued its alliance with the AIADMK. He obviously saw space for a non-Dravidian, national party with a popular PM. A police officer who quit the job to join politics, Annamalai was ready to take risks. Even now he is on a yatra to try to expand the BJP’s base. The BJP central leadership has, however, chosen to play it safe. It would rather pamper the AIADMK. A prudent option, one would say. But that’s so unlike the BJP, which used to be so daring when it came to making forays into unchartered territories.
Coming to Mumbai, the BJP high command’s preferences have got party leaders in Maharashtra confused. When political adversaries are imploding through defections, it’s fine for a party to offer a helping hand to those mutineers, confide BJP leaders. But the party has gotten itself into a mess in the process. Here is a situation where the leader that Modi and Shah successfully built for the future, Devendra Fadnavis, is suddenly finding the ground from under his feet slipping. The BJP is promoting a CM from another party and has inducted another deputy CM, Ajit Pawar, who minces no words about his chief ministerial ambitions. Where does that leave Fadnavis? That aside, the BJP looks so apprehensive about the electoral strength of its new allies. It is reluctant to face municipal polls ahead of the Lok Sabha election, lest the results expose the fault lines!
Suppose the new NDA in Maharashtra does extremely well in the Lok Sabha election. The credit would obviously go to Shinde, although Pawar, if he stays with the NDA till then, would put up his own claims. If Shinde delivers in the Lok Sabha polls PM Modi can’t disown him in the assembly election. The NDA would then have to go with Shinde as its face. What would Pawar and Fadnavis do then? And if Shinde — and Pawar — fail to deliver, would the BJP dump them and go alone in the assembly polls with Fadnavis as its face? It would be too late for that as well.
So, what is the BJP’s politics in Maharashtra even as everyone is focused on the rumblings in the splintered Maha Vikas Agadhi (MVA) or the opposition alliance? Ask any BJP leader in Maharashtra, nobody seems to know. But, for that matter, ask any BJP leader in Telangana, Andhra, Tamil Nadu, or even Odisha. You would draw a blank. They can’t even ask the central leadership for guidance — because Modi and Shah don’t seem to be sure either.
DK Singh is Political Editor at ThePrint. Views are personal.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)