Strategy of Picking Lightweights as CMs Backfires on BJP Top Brass

A commentator has noted that the ruling party’s chief ministers are keen to attribute its recent electoral victories to three ‘M’s: Modi, majoritarianism and money. We must add two more ‘M’s: misuse of official machinery and media bias. Definitions of the terms ‘Modi’ and ‘money’ also vary. While the analyst spoke of the Modi aura, it is his elaborate infrastructure of intimidation that might have done the trick. By money, the analyst meant the poll-eve largesse to voters that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had once derisively described as revdi. ‘Money’ should, in fact, denote the BJP’s massive election funds that it has used to overwhelm rival parties.

The recent elections in Maharashtra showed how the savage use of party funds can distort an election campaign. Every Opposition party has complaints about the absence of a level playing ground — the NCP has alleged that the BJP indulged in blatant misuse of money power, with Supriya Sule describing the scale as unprecedented. “This time, politics had changed completely, money power had changed completely. The use of money has increased manifold. It was not like this earlier,” Sule said.

Now we are also told of another kind of electoral malpractice. Ashok Chavan, who switched from the Congress to the BJP, faces the charge of giving tickets in exchange for money. In Nanded city, Bhanusing Rawat, Chavan’s long-time associate, alleged that the former chief minister had insisted on Rs 50 lakh for tickets from aspirants. This time, allegations of cash for ticket and cash for votes  against the BJP were widespread in Mumbai.

Despite massive victories in elections, all is not hunky-dory with the ruling party. While the ‘M’ factors are working out to its satisfaction, the Modi-Shah duo is encountering challenges on two fronts: stiff resistance to saffronisation in the traditional secular regions, and the decay setting in the administration in BJP-ruled states.

Assembly polls are scheduled this year in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and West Bengal. The BJP has been using all its ‘M’ mantras: Agencies like the Enforcement Directorate are in action; complaints of denial of central funds to Opposition-ruled states and of governors placing hurdles in their path are being heard for some time now; senior BJP leaders have been deputed with enough funds to supervise the polls.

The aim is to gain a substantial footprint in these essentially secular zones. As things stand, it is going to be an uphill task. In West Bengal, the BJP won 77 seats out of 188 it had contested in the previous elections. That is a strike rate of 38 per cent; the ruling TMC has a 48 per cent strike rate. In Tamil Nadu, the DMK in 2021 won 133 seats out of the 188 seats it contested, not counting the seats won by its allies. In neighbouring Kerala, the BJP drew a blank though it contested 115 seats.

In states ruled by the BJP, the worry is the performance of handpicked chief ministers, none of whom was chosen on the basis of acceptability to the party’s elected MLAs. It was Indira Gandhi who had imposed the system of the high command deciding on chief ministers and state office-bearers. She sent AICC observers to manage the elections through individual interviews. Amit Shah has now introduced the system of MLAs or state leaders endorsing names already fixed by the high command. In this case, there is no pretence of elections or interviews.

Begun after 2019, the system has been used to replace senior chief ministers such as Vasundharaje Scindia and Shivraj Singh Chauhan with little-known faces. The move, reminiscent of the dumping of party seniors L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Yashwant Sinha, was intended to serve three purposes. First, senior leaders with their own support base might have gone on to become too big to control and emerge as power centres. Second, the exit of the seniors would help Modi’s personality cult to flourish. Third, the new picks would be more amenable to day-to-day micromanagement by the central bosses.

Unfortunately for the duo, this failed to work on the ground. The chief ministers they have chosen seem to have drawn the wrong message from the party’s better showing in the elections. They expect to survive trials like elections under Modi-Shah’s patronage and protective shield, leading to laxity in governance.

In Madhya Pradesh, there have been massive protests over the contaminated water deaths in Indore. There is widespread public anger against the Uttarakhand government over the Ankita Bhandari murder. The Rajasthan government is under fire on various issues, especially mining in the Aravallis. Some of the novice picks have also encountered non-cooperation from rivals within the party who leak details of administrative lapses, such as in the Ankita Bhandari case.

Delhi’s Rekha Gupta, during her less-than-a-year tenure, has been embroiled in a wide range of controversies, from her failure to combat air pollution to her husband’s role in official work, and has made several gaffes. She has been quoted as saying that AQI was a temperature and measurable with “any” instrument; she referred to Subhas Chandra Bose as Netaji Subhas Palace; on another occasion, she said Bhagat Singh’s bomb attack was against the ‘deaf Congress government’ of the time. The bomb attack took place in 1929, when the British ruled India.

Madhya Pradesh’s deputy chief minister put the party in a spot by boasting that the ‘entire country, its army, its soldiers were bowing at Modi’s feet’.

The BJP bosses are now pressing the laggard chief ministers to improve their functioning. The double engine concept had begun in Uttar Pradesh as a joint endeavour of chief minister Yogi Adityanath and Prime Minister Modi, who addressed public rallies together as a token of a special relationship. But Modi also used it to directly intervene in state decisions -- as the dominant ‘engine’, the high command had the required legitimacy. The worry for the BJP now is that having sought votes in the name of the double engine, Modi cannot escape blame if the state governments fail to perform.

P. Raman is a veteran journalist and political commentator.

In an age of fractured mandates, personality cults and transactional alliances, P. Raman brings clarity to India’s shifting political equations. With Realpolitik, the veteran journalist peers beneath the slogans and spin to reveal the power plays, spectacle, crises and insecurities driving India’s politics.

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