New Delhi: After denying the chief minister’s post to veteran leaders Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Vasundhara Raje Scindia and Raman Singh in the three heartland states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, where the Bharatiya Janata Party stormed to power earlier this month, the party is now reviewing the future of more than 100 MPs who are in danger of not being fielded for the 2024 general elections, ThePrint has learnt.
According to BJP sources, the party has been monitoring the performance reports of at least 100 sitting MPs, whose work has been found to be unsatisfactory in initial surveys. The sources added that the party was also exploring the option of fielding state ministers and sitting MLAs for these seats.
In the last Lok Sabha elections in 2019, the BJP had dropped 99 sitting MPs, according to party sources, to make way for new faces.
“The party is assessing the survey reports of these MPs and looking at who can be a stronger candidate on these seats. Normally, the party considers several factors before denying tickets to sitting MPs/MLAs with a weak performance report, or before choosing to field a new candidate for a seat. Two types of MPs are dropped — those who have been winning for several terms and therefore a need is felt for fielding a new face, and secondly those whose performance has been weak and the party has the option to field a stronger candidate for that seat,” said a senior BJP leader who has been involved in the appraisal of the party’s Lok Sabha candidates.
BJP sources told ThePrint that the Association of Brilliant Minds (ABM), an agency which conducts poll surveys and collects feedback on candidates for the party, is in an advanced stage of assessing the performance of the 100 MPs, on parameters ranging from on-ground presence to perception among people, social media presence, reach of central and state government beneficiary scheme in their constituency and likely opposition candidates.
“After the initial survey, the performance of a hundred sitting MPs has been on watchlist. Many of them have been MPs for several terms and there is a feeling that there is a need for a new face for generational shift [bringing in a younger leader]. Before taking a final decision on them, however, a few other feedbacks will be taken,” said a central BJP functionary on condition of anonymity.
According to party sources, in addition to the ABM survey, the BJP’s own set-up is assessing the performance of the MPs.
A survey has also been commissioned on the Prime Minister’s official NaMo (Narendra Modi) app, before the process of candidate selection. The app has two crore subscribers, according to sources.
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the ‘Jan Man Survey’ on the app, seeking public response on various aspects of governance and leadership. The 14-question survey includes those on the popularity of central schemes, performance of MPs and specifics about the respondent’s constituency.
It was after one such survey in 2018 that the Modi government had launched the PM-Kissan Samman Nidhi, which offers income support to farmers. BJP sources told ThePrint that feedback from the survey had also been used in denying tickets to 35 percent of the party’s sitting MPs ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Talking about the latest survey, Kuljeet Chahal in charge of the NaMo app, said, “It’s a constant process of getting feedback of MPs and of welfare schemes to know people’s pulse”.
ThePrint also reached BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra over phone for a response on the issue of MPs being on the danger list ahead of the 2024 elections, but he declined comment.
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What happened in 2019
According to BJP sources, the party’s decision to field 21 MPs for four state elections held last month — seven in Rajasthan, seven in Madhya Pradesh, four in Chhattisgarh and three in Telangana — was part of its strategy to bring in faces in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
However, while 12 of those fielded won, nine MPs lost the state polls. Those who couldn’t make it include the likes of Devji Patel, Narendra Kumar and Bhagirath Choudhury in Rajasthan, Vijay Baghel in Chhattisgarh and Faggan Singh Kulaste and Ganesh Singh in Madhya Pradesh. In Telangana, MPs Bandi Sanjay, Arvind Dharmapuri and Soyam Bapu Rao lost the polls.
“Except in Telangana, new candidates will be fielded in most of the Parliamentary seats held by these MPs, as despite party swing in the three states [Rajasthan, MP and Chhattisgarh. Congress won the Telangana elections], but they failed to win. It shows that they had won the 2019 Lok Sabha polls only because of the Modi wave in the country. The party will look at other options for these seats,” said the central functionary quoted above.
In UP, the state which sends the maximum number of MPs to Lok Sabha, more than fifteen sitting BJP MPs are at risk of losing candidature in 2024. Five of them are crossing the ‘seventy-five-year-old’ age bracket — the undeclared retirement age in BJP, while ten don’t have impressive performance reports, said party sources.
While Satyadev Pachauri from Kanpur, Mathura MP Hema Malini, Prayagraj’s’s Rita Bahuguna Joshi and Akshay Lal Gaur of Bahraich are above 75 years of age, the performance of MPs Dinesh Lal Yadav ‘Nirahua’ , B.P. Saroj, Kaushal Kishore, Keshari Devi Patel, Sanghmitra Maurya, Mukesh Rajput, Upendra Singh Rawat, Sangam Lal Gupta, Varun Gandhi and Maneka Gandhi are said to have put them in the danger list.
Similarly, eight MPs in Gujrat, 10 from Bihar, ten in Maharashtra and eleven MPs in Madhya Pradesh are said to be on the danger list.
In Delhi, the names of Gautam Gambhir and Hans Raj Hans are said to be on the list, while the party is also believed to be considering replacements for Harsh Vardhan and Meenakshi Lekhi. Chandigarh MP Kirron Kher and Union minister and Goa MP Shripad Yesso Naik are also said to be on the danger list.
In 2019, BJP sources said, the party denied poll tickets to two of two sitting MPs in Andhra Pradesh, nine of 11 MPs in Chhattisgarh, five of seven sitting MPs in Assam, 12 out of 24 sitting MPs in Madhya Pradesh, 13 of 26 of sitting MPs in Gujarat, two of five sitting MPs in Uttarakhand, two of four sitting MPs in Himachal Pradesh, eight of 21 sitting MPs in Bihar, eight of 22 sitting MPs in Maharashtra, 22 of 68 of sitting MPs in Uttar Pradesh, six of 22 sitting MPs in Rajasthan, four of 12 sitting MPs in Jharkhand and two of seven sitting MPs in Delhi.
The party had then denied tickets to some of its most prominent leaders including veterans Lal Krishna Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, former CM B.C. Khanduri and Speaker Sumitra Mahajan.
“The 2019 elections were different election as the party was looking to retire senior leaders, as the Prime Minister wanted generational change and to make his fresh team without baggage. There is no such requirement of forcing the retirement of senior leaders now, but the party has to keep up the constant process of bringing generational change and beat anti-incumbency to keep winning. It is true that in parliament elections voters vote keeping PM Modi in mind, but a large organisation requires a rotational leadership. Giving more opportunities to new people is the only way to grow and expand in new areas,” said a party leader.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
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The BJP must be supremely confident about Mr. Modi’s ability to win the election. Not giving tickets to entrenched MP’s, who have won multiple times and can sabotage elecctions if denied a ticket is very real. I can speak from personal experience where a sitting MLA in our constituency, who was denied a ticket, canvassed openly, requesting us to vote for the opposition candidate. And the opposition candidate won! It is another matter that his party understood their lapse and gave him a ticket again and he won handsomely in the next election! But the damage was done!
Association of BILLION Minds. Not Association of Brilliant Minds (ABM)