Raje having last say in Rajasthan president choice shows Modi-Shah writ won’t always run

Vasundhara Raje | @vasundharaBJP

The event has exposed fault line in a party that otherwise gives out the impression of being decisive under Modi-Shah leadership.

It took the Narendra Modi and Amit Shah-led BJP 71 days to decide on who the next party president in Rajasthan will be, even though the state is set to go to the polls in less than six months.

Party president Shah and Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje caused the delay with their refusal to accept each other’s candidates. Eventually, Raje got her way, and Shah had to cede ground by appointing Rajya Sabha MP but relative lightweight Madan Lal Saini.

Raje was earlier pushing for MLA and state minister Shrichand Kriplani, and later senior state leader Laxmi Narayan Dave, while Shah was backing Jodhpur MP and union minister of state for agriculture and farmers’ welfare Gajendra Shekhawat, who is known to be close to the central leadership.

In a meeting held between Shah and Raje on 13 June in Delhi, the party high command had communicated its final choice – Shekhawat – to the CM for the post of Rajasthan party president, but Raje’s “stiff and angry resistance” forced the central leadership to change its stance.

Vulnerabilities exposed

The impression that the BJP has given out under Modi and Shah is that it is a dictatorial enterprise run by only two people, who rule with an iron fist. But politics – especially in a complex democracy – is never that simple. Compromises are inevitable.

What had remained discreet so far was the nature and extent of compromises the top leadership had to make with regional leaders. This long period of indecision has taken the veil off that.

The Rajasthan episode shows Shah can be challenged, and that even when the top two are so powerful, other leaders can have their way. It has exposed fault line in a party that otherwise gives out the impression of being decisive under this leadership.

Raje wins from weak position

Ironically, Raje got her way despite being completely diminished politically, thanks to her rising unpopularity in the state and the party’s humiliating drubbing in the Ajmer and Alwar Lok Sabha bypolls earlier this year. Shah was pushing his candidate counting on the fact that a weakened Raje could only resist so much, and that she was in no position to rebel.

The friction between Shah and Raje saw the former getting his way on more than one occasion. It was Shah who made former state president Ashok Parnami step down on 18 April, seen largely as his way of undermining Raje. In yet another indication of the tension between Raje and the party’s central leadership, the term of Rajasthan chief secretary Nihal Chand Goel was not extended, as she had demanded. Instead, Devendra Bhushan Gupta was appointed in May.

Her resistance, however, along the with the support she still commands from MLAs, obviously made the high command realise the futility of going to the polls looking like a completely divided house.

Pre-2014 CMs are a different proposition

This episode shows that chief ministers who predate the Modi-Shah combine have more autonomy and space than is often thought. Shivraj Singh Chouhan runs Madhya Pradesh and Raman Singh runs Chhattisgarh just as Raje runs Rajasthan in far more independent ways than, say, Manohar Lal Khattar in Haryana or Trivendra Singh Rawat in Uttarakhand.

Regional leaders like Raman Singh, Raje and Chouhan do not owe their power or popularity to Modi, or to Shah’s election management. They have won elections for the party through their personal appeal, mass base and strategising. The others, however, owe their positions to the post-2014 party brass, having won their states riding on Modi’s appeal and Shah’s electoral craftiness.

The Raje example also means that when it comes to decisions in the run up to the elections, the central BJP leadership will have to adopt a far more consultative approach in states like Rajasthan than in Gujarat or Karnataka, where the local leadership mattered relatively less.

The eventual appointment of Saini as Rajasthan BJP president instead of Shekhawat clearly reflects there is space to resist Shah’s word and there is space to get him to compromise. The protracted tussle over the issue and the not-so-pleasant negotiations, meanwhile, show that PM Modi might give the impression of being a firm, strong willed and decisive leader whose diktat has to be complied with but, eventually, he is as vulnerable and helpless as any other leader in such complex and unyielding situations.

And finally, it shows us that whether by force, compulsion or will, the BJP under Modi and Shah also has to be internally more democratic than is assumed.