New Delhi: The BJP’s National Executive meeting held last Sunday skipped any discussion on the party’s shock defeats in bypolls in Himachal Pradesh, where it is in power and is set to face assembly elections late next year. But the state unit is in no mood to grant leeway to the central high command, mainly the party’s national president J.P. Nadda, who hails from Himachal.
The BJP lost the Fatehpur, Arki and Jubbal-Kotkhai assembly bypolls, as well as that to the Mandi Lok Sabha seat, in the results declared on 2 November. It had held the Jubbal-Kotkhai and Mandi constituencies.
Since the defeat, an all-out blame game has erupted in the Himachal BJP, but much of the anger among local leaders has been reserved for Nadda and Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur.
Ticket distribution and ‘internal sabotage’
According to Himachal BJP leaders, the primary reason for the crushing defeat was “the unilateral decision taken by the high command in distribution of tickets”.
The state BJP, which is in the process of reviewing the reasons for the setback, is claiming that the right candidates were not awarded the tickets in the three assembly seats as the party decided to avoid dynasty politics. They also blame “internal sabotage”.
In Mandi, the party believes that the Congress’ Pratibha Singh, wife of the late former CM Virbhadra Singh, won due to a sympathy wave following the latter’s death in July this year. Along with all these factors, the high rate of inflation in the country is also being cited among the main reasons for the defeat.
Such was the defeat that in Jubbal-Kotkhai, the BJP’s official candidate Neelam Seraik lost her deposit due to the presence of rebel party leader, Chetan Bragta, who finished second behind the Congress’ Rohit Thakur. Bragta is the son of Narinder Bragta, the BJP MLA whose death in June necessitated the bypoll.
The two other seats, Arki and Fatehpur, were held by the Congress, which has managed to retain them despite not being in power in the state.
“The high command had taken a firm decision that family members would not be allocated tickets due to allegations of dynasty politics. That is the reason behind denial of the party ticket to Chetan Bragta,” Himachal BJP president Suresh Kashyap told ThePrint.
“Ultimately, he contested as a rebel candidate and we lost Jubbal-Kotkhai due to this. In Mandi, we lost by a margin of one per cent vote only. There was some sympathy for the late Virbhadra Singh, and rising inflation also became an issue there. The high prices of petrol and diesel, the inflation factor, is affecting voting patterns. The remaining two seats, Arki and Fatehpur, were held by the Congress, and there too, we encountered a significant amount of infighting.”
His views were seconded by a Himachal cabinet minister who did not wish to be named.
“The party lost in these by-elections due to following the wrong criteria of candidate selection and distributing tickets to wrong candidates in all the three assembly constituencies. Chetan Bragta’s name was forwarded by the state unit for the Jubbal-Kotkhai seat, but the high command did not allocate a ticket to him,” the minister said.
“This was despite the fact that he was assured a ticket almost three months back and was asked to get involved in the campaign immediately. In Jubbal-Kotkhai, all BJP workers, from panna pramukhs to booth in-charges, campaigned for Bragta. He and his father (Narinder Bragta) were close to (former CM) Prem Kumar Dhumal. They were sacrificed to destroy their influence and finally the ticket was allocated to a very weak candidate,” the minister added.
State unit vice-president Kripal Parmar also singled out candidate selection criteria, claiming it had become arbitrary in recent years.
“The party opts to choose the parameters for candidate selection according to its own convenience. It had earlier said during the last election that those involved in internal sabotage would not be allocated tickets in the future,” he said.
“In Fatehpur, however, Baldev Thakur, who contested as an independent in 2017, was allocated the party’s symbol. Similarly, Neelam Saraik, who also contested as an independent in 2017 against the party’s official candidate Narinder Bragta, was given the ticket from Jubbal-Kotkhai. She lost her deposit in the seat and set a record of getting the lowest number of votes (2,644) in a BJP-ruled state. All this was done by misleading the party’s central leadership and by providing it with incorrect feedback.”
A Himachal BJP vice-president told ThePrint on the condition of anonymity that the party missed the chance to snatch some seats from the Congress.
“In Arki, where Virbhadra Singh had emerged victorious in the last assembly election, there was a good opportunity to snatch the seat from the Congress. A close aide of Virbhadra Singh had revolted against the local Congress candidate Sanjay Awasthi. But BJP could not take advantage of this feud in the Congress camp,” the vice-president said.
“Rattanpal Singh, a close associate of Bihar Health Minister Mangal Pandey, was allocated the ticket. He had lost in the last election as well. Mangal Pandey was the Himachal in-charge at that time of ticket distribution, and due to his close association with BJP’s national president J.P. Nadda, Rattanpal Singh was allocated the ticket in place of Govind Ram Sharma, who is a two-time MLA from this seat.”
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Drop in vote-share a major concern
The ruling party traditionally holds an upper hand in by-elections. But the BJP’s troubles from its crushing defeat have been compounded by the fact that there has been a drastic drop in its vote-share in these constituencies.
In Fatehpur, the BJP had received 49 per cent of the votes in the 2017 assembly elections, but this dropped to 32 per cent in the bypoll.
In Jubbal-Kotkhai, the Congress had about 52 per cent of the vote-share, while rebel Chetan Bragta managed 41 per cent, leaving the BJP’s Seraik with just four per cent of the votes polled. In the 2017 assembly elections, the Congress had about 42 per cent of the vote-share while the BJP had managed 49 per cent.
In the Mandi Lok Sabha constituency, the Congress’ vote-share has risen from 27 per cent in the 2019 Parliamentary elections to nearly 49 per cent in these elections. The BJP’s has declined from 69.7 per cent in 2019 to about 48 per cent this time.
Another senior BJP leader said CM Thakur has to shoulder a lot of the blame for the defeats.
“Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur completely misled the high command on the Fatehpur seat. Since Kripal Parmar had got the assembly ticket in 2017 due to PM Modi’s personal intervention, the state-level leaders had decided this time to sideline him. In order to sabotage his candidacy, fake reports were dispatched to PMO; hence he was not given a ticket this time,” the leader said.
“Kotkhai seat was sacrificed due to the internal tussle between the J.P. Nadda camp and the Prem Kumar Dhumal camp. CM Thakur did not want to give ticket to Chetan Bragta who is considered quite close to (Union Minister) Anurag Thakur and Dhumal. So the ticket was allocated to a weak candidate in Neelam Seraik. But even he (the CM) could not ensure her victory,” the leader added.
The relationship between Prem Kumar Dhumal and J.P. Nadda has been quite muddy for a long time. In 2010, when Dhumal was CM of the state, he had requested the high command to accommodate Nadda in the central team. Following this request, then-BJP president Nitin Gadkari removed Nadda from state politics and appointed him as the party’s national general secretary, giving Dhumal a free rein in state affairs. Later on, Nadda was elected to Rajya Sabha.
But through all these years, Nadda’s stature within the party has grown due to his proximity to PM Modi. He first became a minister in the Modi cabinet, and now is the party’s national president.
Nadda has also managed to install his close associate, Jai Ram Thakur, as CM. But the resounding defeat in the bypolls has led to questions being raised on Thakur’s leadership and the high command’s decisions.
(Edited by Arun Prashanth)
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