BJP's Leadership Shuffle: Generational Change or Modi's Strategy for a Return to Power?

Patna: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has replaced prominent leaders like Shivraj Singh Chouhan in Madhya Pradesh and Vasundhara Raje in Rajasthan, surprising political circles. A few years ago, it also sidelined Sushil Kumar Modi in Bihar.

After winning the assembly elections in 2020 in Bihar, the party opted for lesser-known figures in the cabinet such as Tarkishore Prasad and Renu Kushwaha. Similarly, this time, the party chose Mohan Yadav to become chief minister in Madhya Pradesh and first-time MLA Bhajanlal Sharma in Rajasthan.

Sushil Kumar Modi

Sushil Kumar Modi, who had served as the deputy chief minister since Nitish Kumar became the chief minister, replacing Rabri Devi in 2005, performed reasonably well as both the finance minister and the party leader.

In 2020, he campaigned in Bihar in a manner similar to how Shivraj Singh Chouhan had campaigned in Madhya Pradesh.

Sushil Modi was a prominent leader in the Jayaprakash Narayan-led Total Revolution in 1974 and had risen significantly in politics through the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).

As a result, his supporters were optimistic that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would “accommodate” him in his cabinet, given his experience, pedigree, and loyalty to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)’s worldview.

However, the party high command did just the opposite.

The party, led by the Modi-Shah duo after the 2014 general elections, not only removed him from the position of deputy CM but also relegated him to insignificance.

Several months after his removal as the “key” BJP leader, he was sent to the Rajya Sabha. He has a peripheral role to play in the party now.

Shivraj Singh Chouhan

Similarly, Chouhan – a five-time MP and the longest-serving chief minister of Madhya Pradesh – has been replaced by Mohan Yadav, a lesser-known party MLA from Ujjain.

Chouhan’s decision to increase the stipend from Rs 1,500 to Rs 3,000 under the ‘Ladli Behna’ scheme, coupled with his intense campaigning, was believed to have provided traction to his party against the Congress in the recently concluded assembly elections.

Will Chouhan meet the same fate as Sushil Modi? It’s noteworthy that Sushil Modi enjoys the unique distinction of never losing an election, whether in the Lok Sabha or in the assembly elections, ever since he made his debut in electoral politics in 1995.

The events unfolding from now on can only provide an answer to this question in the “era of surprises” ushered in by the Modi-Shah duo.

The BJP has thrown similar surprises in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, which were among the five states undergoing assembly elections recently.

The party has “astonished” its supporters and opponents by nominating the first-time MLA from Sanganer, Bhajan Lal Sharma, as the Rajasthan chief minister. Chhattisgarh, too, has Vishnu Deo Sai from a tribal community and relatively junior among the party veterans as its chief minister.

Significantly, all these “sidelined” leaders – Chouhan, Sushil Modi, Raje, and Singh – are much younger than the 75 years of age that the Modi-Shah brand of the BJP has set for ‘retiring’ from politics and joining the Margdarshak Mandal. In fact, they are much younger than Narendra Modi, who was born on September 17, 1950, according to his certificates.

A political strategy?

Leaders like Chouhan and Sushil Modi, who rose to prominence during the era of A.B. Vajpayee and L.K. Advani, were significant figures in the BJP in their respective states before Narendra Modi became prime minister in 2014.

The question arises whether the BJP’s leadership is deliberately sidelining these experienced leaders for a generational change, to introduce new faces and promote freshness within the party. Is this a strategy to counter Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s caste-based survey and the implementation of 65% reservation for backward classes in government jobs, a move embraced by parties within the INDIA bloc as a counter to BJP’s Hindutva politics?

A Gorakhpur-based senior RSS-BJP leader and staunch loyalist of Uttar Pradesh chief minister Adityanath Yogi told this writer, on condition of anonymity, “Narendra Modi is systematically sidelining all the senior and strong leaders with the sole purpose to return to power in 2024. He feels threatened by the leaders of superior pedigree and has been working in a ruthless manner to remove the ‘obstacles’ from his way in the run up to the 2024 polls. And, he has got Amit Shah as the ‘best hatchet man’ to do the job for him.”

“The Modi-Shah duo has captured the party and the RSS, too. Modi and Shah have grown in power but the BJP is no longer a democratic party that it used to be during the Vajpayee-Advani era,” he said.

The observation made by the person cited above echoes the sentiments of supporters of Adityanath, who has established his own network of followers drawn from his Hindu Vahini, for whom he is perceived as more significant than Modi and Shah in Uttar Pradesh.

Some Adityanath loyalists at Bareilly also confided, of course in confidence, that Modi and Shah “hated” Adityanath. “Maharaj ji (Adityanath) was never their (Modi and Shah’s) first choice. They wanted to make Manoj Sinha the chief minister in 2017. But because of [Adityanath’s] strong network of loyalists, they failed to do so. Modi resorted to several devious mechanisms to sideline Adityanath during the 2019 Lok Sabha and 2022 assembly elections. Very reluctantly, they projected him as the chief ministerial candidate during the 2022 polls,” an Adityanath loyalist in Bareilly told this writer.

These loyalists seemingly nurture the hope that Adityanath will replace Modi at the helm of the BJP’s affairs in the future. Armed with his militant cadres, Adityanath is considered to be more aggressive than even Modi and Amit Shah in anti-minority rhetoric – a significant qualification in the RSS’s worldview.

In the 2022 elections, Adityanath advocated an 80% versus 20% approach and is actively renaming cities with Mughal legacies. His supporters are more assertive than the BJP’s in fostering animosity between Hindus and Muslims, in the name of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, Kashi Vishwanath-Gyanvapi in Varanasi, and the birthplace of Lord Krishna in Mathura.

Also read: The Limits of Hindutva’s Homegrown Authoritarianism

The politics of social justice

Some TV channels have described the appointment of a Yadav and an Adivasi leader as chief ministers in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, respectively, as Modi’s “masterstroke” against the politics of social justice by Nitish Kumar, Lalu Prasad Yadav, and Akhilesh Yadav. However, a closer look at concurrent history reveals that there is no “novelty” in the BJP’s decision.

Mohan Yadav is not the first Yadav chief minister; Madhya Pradesh had Babulal Gaur, a Yadav, as the chief minister for over a year from 2004 to 2005. Chouhan was an OBC leader, and so was Uma Bharti.

Of course, the BJP has made significant inroads in the OBC vote bank in Madhya Pradesh. However, this success can be attributed to the failure of the social justice movement in MP, unlike in Bihar. Jayaprakash Narayan had endorsed Sharad Yadav as the “People’s Candidate” in the Bhopal Lok Sabha seat during the 1974 by-election. Sharad won the polls and repeated his victory in 1977. However, he abandoned the social justice movement in his own state, relocating to Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, leaving a leadership “void” for the cause of social justice.

Here, the credit goes to the RSS-BJP for exploiting this void and creating its own brand of leaders in Madhya Pradesh, marking the real strength of the BJP in the state.

Nalin Verma is a senior journalist, author, media educator, and independent researcher in folklore.