BJP’s ‘steel frame’ loses lustre ahead of key polls

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BJP reveals weakness to fend off satrap challenges

By Manish Anand

New Delhi, August 27: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Opposition camp are in contrasting spotlight in Jammu and Kashmir. The BJP will be squaring off with the alliance of the Congress and the National Conference (NC) for pole finish in Srinagar on October 4.

The BJP workers laid siege to the party’s office in Jammu yesterday. An alarmed BJP hurriedly withdrew list of the 44 candidates.

In a span of an hour, the BJP’s list of 44 candidates was pruned to 16 nominees for the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly poll. By yesterday evening, the Congress and the NC announced the poll pact.

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The NC will contest 51 Assembly seats. The Congress settled for 32 constituencies. They will friendly box each other on five seats. Two seats went for smaller outfits.

The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) is stranded in Jammu and Kashmir politics. The Mehbooba Mufti-led outfit is struggling to erase the people’s memories of the PDP allowing the BJP to share power in Jammu and Kashmir.

In a matter of a few hours, the BJP gave away signs of the party’s once famed steel-frame leadership now showing signs of nervousness. In 2017, the BJP had sent the leadership of the party in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) into retirement from municipal politics lock, stock, and barrel.

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The BJP’s MCD leaders who had rubbed shoulders with the likes of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, LK Advani, Vijay Kumar Malhotra, Madan Lal Khurana, and others didn’t utter words of protests.

But the BJP workers in Jammu were up in arms after the withdrawn first list showed turncoats favoured by the party. The agitated BJP workers were fuming at the party leadership.

Former deputy chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir Nirmal Singh too missed out from the withdrawn list of the candidates. This was part of the trends within the BJP, as several of the regional satraps over the years saw their wings clipped.

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By withdrawing the first list of the 44 candidates, the BJP leadership is now being seen by the party leaders vulnerable to challenge from regional satraps. “This will rankle. The one-up manship of the leadership is now gone,” said a senior BJP functionary.

The BJP leadership had already shown signs of bending backward by bringing back Ram Madhav, the former general secretary of the party. In 2020, Madhav was sent out of the BJP, marking his steep decline from the summit positions that he held in the party to irrelevance.

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About The Author

Manish Anand

Manish Anand is a senior journalist with more than two decades of hardcore reporting on beats such as Prime Minister’s Office, Parliament, BJP, Congress, Planning Commission, NITI Aayog, and scores of Union Ministries.

His past has been with The New Indian Express, The Asian Age/Deccan Chronicle, and The Statesman.

For about 15 years, Manish was also a regular commentator and host for talks on AIR on foreign affairs.

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