New Delhi: Kailash Vijayvargiya may have been lying low after the BJP’s poll defeat in West Bengal, but the party high command’s confidence in him is unshaken.
As the BJP’s leader in-charge of Bengal, in the lead-up to the assembly polls, Vijayvargiya was heavily involved in the party’s electoral strategy.
Party rivals like Tathagata Roy, a former governor of Meghalaya, have constantly targeted him after the defeat. However, while Vijayvargiya has never publicly responded to any criticism, BJP stalwarts like Union Home Minister Amit Shah and party president J.P. Nadda have staunchly defended him at party forums, BJP sources said.
In the BJP National Executive Committee meeting held last week, Nadda expressed satisfaction over the party’s “strong position” in Bengal and talked about visiting the state. Also last week, the BJP high-command dispatched Vijayvargiya to Dadar to attend the working committee meeting of the Dadar and Nagar Haveli unit.
However, since May, when the Bengal election results were released, his involvement in matters relating to the Bengal BJP has reduced drastically, and he has participated in only two virtual meetings as the party’s leader in charge for the state.
While he may not have a packed party schedule at the time, BJP sources say it is only because the next crucial election in Bengal — the Lok Sabha polls — is still three years away. Shah, they added, has complete faith in him.
Vijayvargiya, who is away on a trip abroad, did not respond to ThePrint’s text messages for comment on this report till the time of publishing.
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Religion on his mind
Considered to be the most powerful national general secretary of the BJP during Amit Shah and J.P. Nadda’s party presidency, Vijayvargiya’s Twitter profile is indication enough of his activities over six months after the Bengal elections.
These days, it appears, Vijayvargiya is ardently seeking divine benediction: whether visiting the Mahakal temple in Ujjain, the Hanuman temple in Pitreshwar, meeting the Jain monk Acharya Vidyasagar, or participating in the Narmada Parikrama Yatra.
Just days ago, at a prayer ceremony organised on the occasion of the death anniversary of Kailash Sarang, father of Madhya Pradesh minister Vishwas Sarang, Vijayvargiya sang his favourite song, “Tu kitni acchi hai tu kitni bholi hai, Oh maa”.
Vijayvargiya, say BJP leaders, spends most of his time these days in either Bhopal or Indore. At the ‘bhutta party’ he organised in Bhopal during the assembly session in August, the Sholay song Yeh Dosti Hum Nahi Todenge was used liberally in BJP circles to describe the strong bonding between Vijayvargiya and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who attended the feast, sources said.
At the time, Vijayvargiya needed support from an old friend like Chouhan. Likewise, CM Chouhan needed a strong leader like Vijayvargiya by his side as he faced a challenge to his authority from leaders like Narottam Mishra.
Decades ago, Chouhan and Vijayvargiya used to work together in the BJP Yuva Morcha. Later, Chouhan surpassed Vijayvargiya in political success and, by the time of the former’s second term as CM (2008-2013), cracks started to appear in their friendship. At one point, Vijayvargiya even emerged as a political rival of CM Chouhan.
Amit Shah’s Man Friday
When Amit Shah shifted to Delhi after his elevation as BJP president in 2014, he summoned Vijayvargiya there. He was appointed BJP in-charge of Haryana during the 2014 assembly polls. Among the first four states where the BJP emerged victorious under the leadership of Amit Shah was Haryana, where a BJP government was formed for the first time that year.
In Haryana, Vijayvargiya managed to cajole Ram Rahim Singh Insan of the Sirsa-based Dera Sacha Sauda to provide support to the BJP. Ram Rahim’s backing was seen as one of the major reasons for the BJP’s victory.
Seen as a leader with aggressive organisational skills, Vijayvargiya became Shah’s Man Friday, to whom the then BJP chief entrusted the responsibility to design a grand BJP project: capturing power in West Bengal.
With Vijayvargiya appointed party in-charge in 2015, the BJP not only won 18 out of 42 seats in West Bengal during the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, but the vote share of the party also shot up to 40 per cent from 10 per cent.
Although it was roundly defeated in the 2021 Bengal assembly elections, the BJP did win 77 seats — a massive jump from the three seats it won in 2016 — with a 38 per cent vote share.
Such is Shah’s confidence in Vijayvargiya that he remains party in-charge in Bengal. A senior BJP leader said, under Shah, only two in-charges were allowed to take independent decisions — Om Mathur in UP and Kailash Vijayvargiya in Bengal.
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Rise of the man from Indore
Vijayvargiya comes from Indore, a city considered the financial capital of Madhya Pradesh and deemed important for the BJP and the RSS for long. BJP leaders from the city, be it Sumitra Mahajan or Vijayvargiya, have made a mark in national politics.
“During his tenure as mayor, Vijayvargiya started a road construction programme in Indore with public participation — a first for India. Such has been his impact that even after so many years Indore is No. 1 in the Swachh Bharat Mission rankings for four years running. Due to these and other projects as the public works minister of MP, he was already noted by the high command,” said Malini Gaud, former mayor of Indore and an MLA from the city, told ThePrint.
Madhya Pradesh BJP vice-president Jitu Jarati added, “After observing his stupendous organisational ability and his loyalty to Hindutva ideology, leaders like Shivendra Sharma and Narayan Rao, who were prominent leaders of Madhya Pradesh at the time, asked Vijayvargiya’s father to get him involved in politics. Later on, Kushabhau Thackeray and Suresh Soni promoted him in the party.”
Unlike Chouhan, Vijayvargiya has cultivated a strongman image. Once, during Congress leader Digvijaya Singh’s tenure as CM, at a fashion show in Indore, Vijayvargiya, dressed in T-shirt and jeans, dodged police, gained entry and registered his protest after climbing up on the stage.
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After the Bengal defeat
To be sure, the BJP’s defeat in Bengal and Mukul Roy’s return to the Trinamool Congress have affected Vijayvargiya’s political stature in the larger organisation.
Several BJP leaders like Dilip Ghosh, Arvind Menon and Shiv Prakash have accused Vijayvargiya of adopting strategies that prevented the party from winning in Bengal. Some leaders even blamed him for arbitrarily distributing BJP funds.
In order to restore calm in the party’s Bengal unit, the BJP high command removed Dilip Ghosh from the post of the BJP’s state unit president in September, replaced him with Sukanta Majumdar, and gave Suvendu Adhikari more prominence. However, Vijayvargiya was untouched.
At the same time, during BJP meetings, both Amit Shah and J.P. Nadda are believed to have defended Vijayvargiya, pointing out that the jump from three to 77 MLAs was a big improvement.
A senior BJP leader said, “There is no big political challenge before the party in Bengal till the next Lok Sabha elections. Those who want to shift to Trinamool are free to do so. The decision to contest the Bengal polls like an election in UP can be deemed a mistake as the state has a very unique identity, but this was not just Vijayvargiya’s mistake.”
All the strategies, the leader added, are formed and implemented at the level of Amit Shah, who has full confidence in Vijayvargiya. “Yet the current time might be some sort of a cooling-off period for him, because Chouhan is quite powerful in MP and there is nothing much to do at the central level,” he said.
(Edited by Saikat Niyogi)
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